NATURE mn HUMAN NATURE 




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NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE. 
I vol. i2mo, $1.25 ftet. 

INDIAN MYTHS; 
Or, Legends, Traditions, and Symbols of the Abo- 
rigines of America compared with those of Other 
Countries, including Hindostan, Egypt, Persia, 
Assyria, and China. With Map, numerous Plates 
and Diagrams. 8vo, gilt top, i?s.oo. 

MASKS, HEADS, AND FACES. 
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
Boston and New York. 



NATURE 



AND HUMAN NATURE 



BY 



ELLEN RUSSELL EMERSON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

®fte iMtembe ptt^ii, Cambribge 

1902 



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COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY ELLEN RUSSELL EMERSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published March, 1902 



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TO MY HUSBAND 



PREFACE 

The contents of this volume, compiled 
from notes when in field and forest or at 
work in archaeological research, are proffered 
the student by way of commentaries. Had 
I been in hearing of my reader and fellow 
student it is likely that the notes would not 
have been taken, the enthusiasm of the 
hour occasioned by discovery of the curious 
habits of birds, plants, and lower animate 
life, or in laying hold of the labyrinthine 
thread of human development at some turn, 
finding avenue both through exclamations 
of surprise or delight, and sympathetic ex- 
change of views. 

In the compilation of my notes I have 
selected topics that were suggested in part 
by data accumulated and published with 
illustrations in a former work, these bearing 
evidence to the successive epochs of develop- 



vi PREFACE 

ment marking the evolution of human intel- 
hgence, — the chapters on structural devices 
and art especially based on this evidence. 
The initiation of advancement in which hu- 
man nature assumes its high prerogative of 
maker of Hterature, inventor of arts, and com- 
poser of music, is traced to the primitive cere- 
monial, a study of which on the part of the 
writer gave rise to notes on the attitude of 
man toward natural phenomena, his imita- 
tive faculties whence he became " maker " 
invoked by early observation and naive con- 
clusions, and his language founded on nat- 
ural environment, the result of which is 
that natural imagery so signally employed 
by Egyptian sages. It is in Egypt that is 
found the closeness of analogy between na- 
ture and human nature which modern science 
is rapidly disclosing, — a bequest on the part 
of Egyptian philosophy to religious thought 
that is of far-reaching import, for the science 
of correspondence used in disclosure of that 
analogy is full of reassurance, suggesting an 
indissoluble bond between nature and human 



PREFACE vli 

nature that shall exist to all eternity, man's 
will determining its effect just as a disposition 
to rise above the earth or to remain prone 
upon it established the hne between winged 
and unwinged hfe. Suggestive and reassur- 
ing Egyptian imagery involves protracted 
research and heedful discrimination on the 
part of a student, his most secure method, 
as I found, accurate copies from the original 
writing. Egyptian writing includes vignettes 
and extended illustrations, and while my 
copies are the basis of a chapter upon nat- 
ural imagery they are not included in the 
present work, the purpose of which is served 
if the reader is induced to carry forward 
analogies between nature and human na- 
ture, thus by experimental knowledge justi- 
fying the often quoted view that the seen is 
a manifestation of the unseen. 

ELLEN RUSSELL EMERSON. 
Boston, 1901. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS ... 1 

II. SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES . , 28 

in. art; old USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS . . 63 

IV. NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT MESSAGE OF ART . 107 

V. IDEALS AND '^' OUR OWN IMAGE "... 139 

VI. BLINDNESS AND VISION 170 

VII. NATURAL IMAGERY 214 

Vni. LAW IN THINGS, LOVE AND RESURRECTION . 250 

IX. MUSIC 263 

X. RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 305 

XI. LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS . . 329 

XII. DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION . . 350 

XIII. THE SONNET AND PROPHECY .... 367 

XIV. INFLUENCES AND RESULTS .... 386 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 

Estrangement is impossible between 
nature and human nature for any length of 
time, the spring and source of all life being 
one. There is a relationship between yonder 
planets fringing the rim of the sunset, the 
young moon and Venus her attendant star, 
and the immortelles that thread the brow of 
the hill with a silvery band, since these hving 
pearls and the sky's living gems dimpling 
the oncomino; dark are born of Eternal Lio-ht. 
And there is a close afiinity between a child 
and the immortelles and the young moon 
together with its attendant star, for is not 
the child heir of nature ? 

As the winged insect discloses its ante- 
cedent form so does man, the network of 
motor nerves, those radiating cords ramifying 



2 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the human mechanism providing operative 
power, have a prototype in the fibrous bundles 
of the vascular and cellular tissue of the leaves 
of a tree, and these in turn are similar to the 
nervures of insects, those tubes that give 
expansion to the insect's wing when it 
launches upon the invisible air. 

Action is like in like environment among 
corresponding forms, and governed by kin- 
dred impulses of fear or delight it produces 
similar results, providing means of reorgani- 
zation and metamorphoses. In the profound 
depths of the sea a lamp was constructed 
by a curious denizen of the dark depths ; 
this lamp evolved by processes whereby are 
all formulations made by life immanent in 
matter, and affixed to this sea-child's shoul- 
der, growing therefrom, this lamp is a lan- 
tern to lesser fish, both their amazement and 
destruction, for its purpose is none other than 
a decoy, — a means the inventor evolved to 
obtain food. An imitation of the sun, it is 
calculated excellently to make the portals 
of death even a pleasurable if surprised 
entrance into one of the multitudinous pits 
of reorcfanization which nature manufac- 
tures; imitation, mimicry, and likeness her 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 3 

web of design. And nature is peculiarly 
attractive when she affirms kinship through- 
out the phenomena of form by some sudden 
masquerade; a resemblance in the face of 
a flower to human lineaments charms all the 
world ; that the pansy demurely mimics the 
grandame whose high cap border flares 
about her serious brow as she sits in door- 
way contentedly surveying these lowly flow- 
ers crowding up the newly weeded earth 
gives this plant an enduring grace. But if 
in gentle burlesque there is charm through 
resemblance, there is profound pleasure in 
recognition of similarity in adaptive devices, 
— that plants, for instance, assume relation- 
ship with their environment, in a degree con- 
trolling it as does man, since it is thus made 
evident that intelligence is fundamental to 
form, thinking processes or their equivalent 
marking structural evolution or maintenance. 
And so it is not a poetic fantasy that the 
shower-washed things of spring, developing 
in the advancing season, are tremulous with 
a joy expressed in the song of the bird ; or, 
to use another example, that the insect and 
bird inhabitants of the world think, — that, 
in brief, the universe is an embodiment of 



4 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Reason, its several parts, like the organs of 
the human body, more or less conscious. 

Are not examples of wisdom on the part 
of the plant Hke those of the animal world ? 
The cicada, for example, is directed by 
thought when, liberated by its own efforts, it 
hastens to precipitate itself upon the unknown 
realm beneath from the high, overarching 
branch wherein had been its cradle. In- 
stinct? Surely; but what is instinct but 
unproclaimed and voiceless reason? Such, 
indeed, is that which prompts all animate life 
to seek its necessary environment. Does not 
the common worm give proof of having an 
idea how to settle herself even more com- 
fortably than did the Indian woman in her 
tent? for observe how securely she fastens 
a carefully selected leaf edge to edge, the 
silken twine her own manufacture, taut but 
unbroken. Is this purposeless work? By 
no means ; for the green leaf, folded with 
such dexterity, and lined with silk further- 
more, is the little carpenter's tent, which, 
with the freedom of an Arab, she attaches 
and reattaches as the necessity for fresh 
feeding ground demands.^ 

^ Carpenter moth. 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 5 

And are we to view with disdain that 
queer httle figure, the foreign monk, with 
his feather baton in reverential zeal brush- 
ing the fcurf on which he walks, fearful that 
his foot shoidd crush the worm? Let us 
look into these small matters, and we need 
not wear the monk's hood to learn somethinof 
of value betraying our own kinship to lower 
animal life. 

Moreover, correlation of insects and plants, 
while giving coherence to natural phenomena, 
is purposeful and often neighborly. The leaf 
is not only given for a dwelling but for food. 
Out of its abundance the garden shrub affords 
shelter and nourishment to myriad organisms, 
its dependents in the course of evolution at 
length developing into conditions that chal- 
lenge the plant's blossoms in color and shape. 

Neighborliness, a means of evolution, re- 
bukes indolence, as also self-abandonment. 
To prevent degeneracy the insect must spin, 
and so must the plant, whose woof is of 
sunbeams and dew. And thus is evolution 
and variation in insect and flower, the one 
winged, the other in bloom, the former 
charged with the golden treasure of the 
latter as it roves from chaHce to chalice. 



6 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Reason sits at the door of the universe 
and plies her shuttle, and behold, the gay 
frigates in the air and the lustrous turf 
a-quiver with bloom ! 

Reason in things at the beginning covered 
the barren rock thrown up by submarine 
Tolcanoes, and at the first contact with air 
the rock is covered with minute plants, 
yellow and gray ; those colors followed by 
blue and green as their construction changes, 
— a process to be witnessed annually upon 
the broad marshes fronting the level sea. 
For the unseen shuttle of the presiding 
Form-Maker flying back and forth permits 
no rest to the aerial magician thus met; 
complex forms develop from uncomplex, — 
the leaf, a marvel of living growth, a breath- 
ing organ, puts forth a tiny offspring, and 
behold, the first blossom of God ! the elder 
brother of the child ! And this plant-child 
expands and fruits, a harbinger of the garden 
wherein the grandame sits with her mimic 
crowd of miniature faces. Wait on this 
thought, cavillers of the privilege and gift 
of life, degenerates in spirit, too indolent to 
spin or weave with the zeal of plant or 
worm, claiming that all is vexation of spirit, 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 7 

that all things if they wax, wane ; that even 
the ideals of man fade and pass with the 
generation wherein they were born. ShaU 
nature outdo human nature ? the plant evolve 
the rose through cycles of change, and man 
cease to heed ideals ? Impossible ; the Ideal 
is the only Real. The soul has its seed 
within itself, as the plants in the Garden of 
Eden.^ 

But to return to the marvels of the Form- 
Maker in nature, prototype of the marvels of 
human nature and of which none are greater 
than the plants of the sea, for marine plants 
form neither calyx nor corolla, but marine 
animals have a way that, if brimming with 
ambitions, also is a prophecy : organizing 
themselves into groups, and putting forth 
branches and buds that expand mysterious 
tentacles which have the appearance of 
corollas, they hint at what shall come to pass 
on the engrounded rock, deep breasted with 
fertile earth. For these organisms have 
communal ideas, and to that degree is their 
neighborliness developed at approach of 
danger they give warning one to another ; 
thus at rude touch, with a swing as per- 

1 Genesis i. 11. 



8 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

force of gliding current, the one part, or 
branch, alarmed, warns the next above or 
below upon the family stalk, which in turn 
warns its neighbor, when suddenly, from 
radiance of simulated flowers the whole 
household folds up into a snug coterie of 
buds, — sea anemone ! and all as sensitive 
as the windflower, its bright representative 
in the woodlands. 

Movement and locomotion are easy to na- 
tives of the sea, but there is indolence as 
well as activity among them, many preferring 
the shallows, disliking lonely adventure and 
self-locomotion, so settling themselves in the 
ooze as the bivalves; these children of na- 
ture therefore standing small chance before 
an enemy paying the penalty of the un-self- 
reliant. Activity indeed seems to bear some 
direct ratio to substance — for the least of 
creatures, those corpuscles, the algae's first 
parents, are incomparably active, even as is 
Thought. Creatures that have not substance 
enough even to be opaque swim as fish, twist 
like worms, glide like serpents, and, mere 
points to the naked eye, have powers of loco- 
motion suggesting an impetus as imperious 
as polar electricity, — this, an indwelling 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 9 

light, supposing that force possessed of pur- 
pose and wit to carry the purpose to desired 
issue. And these atoms have a will of their 
own, quite adequate to growth and reproduc- 
tion, a fact adding emphasis to the encour- 
aging statement in respect to human power 
exerted supposably upon the removal of 
mountains. 

Marine plants are to a large degree free 
lances, exhibiting indifference as to their 
habitat, often fixing themselves to whatever 
chances as if in blind coherence. While 
the land plants have a choice as to the soil 
they plunge their feet into, — indeed, are 
not their seeds weighted or winged, securing 
the chances of choice? 

Bohemianism is of early date among sea- 
farers, an inconsequence as to footing com- 
mon to Monad and Nomad ! But critical 
though the land plants, precipitous uplifts 
often reduce them to difficult straits ; hence 
that desperate sign of distress, the cedar's 
helpless root stiffly probing an unbridged 
chasm, its stem leaning as for protection 
as^ainst the cleavinof earth. 

In mountain districts bloom is sudden as if 
forced by an autocratic shove of the shuttle 



10 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

that had pHed itself at leisure in the shallows 
of cosmos. Here the observer finds necessary 
a strenuous determination to lose no time if 
desirous to lay hold of the marvels of spring- 
tide. And it is most likely that at the un- 
bridged chasm, where the cedar is at such 
straits, — a chasm unscalable by human feet, 

— a bush of Ophir is laden with abundant gold 

— a mountain-born Mimulus shining in a 
sheen of living sunbeams, and a mimic withal 
as the pansy, but with a tricky monkey face. 

The mountain ever bears a reminiscence 
of its primitive rush when forced upward by 
volcanic impulses ; it has dripping declivities 
and its universal colors are yellow or gray, 
followed by drifts of columbine, blues and 
rhus greens. And on its accHvities the 
advancing foot is met by bands of toiling 
insects whose activity eclipses that of the 
first parents of the algse, while it is on the 
broad plateau, where bearded grasses declare 
themselves masters of the situation, show- 
ing a rascal temper as they strike for lodg- 
ment into unprotected foot, that ambitious 
plants crowd upon each other, elbowing their 
neighbors. Infested with difficulties, and 
never reached except for a purpose and 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 11 

after a strenuous climb in hazardous paths 
among gnarled roots and craggy steeps 
traveled by spring torrents, — a visit to 
mountain regions teaches how close are the 
similitudes of nature's combat with adverse 
storms and man's, neither yielding, and each 
at last ascendant in a prescribed realm. And 
the mountain bears upon its scarred shoulders 
trophies of rare constructions, these showing 
that in high regions the shuttle of Reason 
had been plied to the end of purer and 
more ideal shapes than in the primitive cos- 
mos. How diverse the structure of the first 
flower in the seething shallows of those 
primitive seas and the Alpine rose ! 

Processes of development are stubbornly 
maintained, however, in the mountain bar- 
rens, as in the coverts and pastures of the 
sea, the energy of Life distilling dew from 
hidden sources, barrens and coverts equally 
an assurance of the Reason in things whose 
adaptations of means to end discloses pre- 
vision, that prerogative of pure mind un- 
dominated by limitations of matter. 

And on plain as on mountain these adap- 
tations suggest a fine subtilty, for Reason 
wrought out some problems at the begin- 



12 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ning in the weft that show in the fabric of 
things, these variations giving opportunity 
for divergencies in the woof. 

It is permissible that, set among crowding 
chaparral, the saguarra from a lowly estate 
shall become a rival to the lofty pine, as thus 
it is able to exhibit its precious blossoms 
and, inviting the visiting insect, accomplish 
the ends of its development. 

Accommodation to circumstances is com- 
mon in plant life, and it has been observed 
that a plant will turn and curve quite about 
in order to get into position to send its stem 
into the light, while as often the root of the 
stem will bend in the opposite direction, 
driving its tip beneath the soil, so avoiding 
the light, movements as direct and purpose- 
ful as any conscious act of the human being 
in providing against some adverse circum- 
stance which threatens its welfare. 

Arising with all the organs of vegetal life 
complete, root, stem, and leaves previously 
rolled up in the seed, the plant begins to 
develop the flower, that miracle of construc- 
tion quite surpassing all antecedent parts, 
though prophesied by them. And the will- 
power which is disclosed in the maturing 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 13 

plant dominates the final stage when is 
achieved the birth of the seed, for reproduc- 
tion is the end of the laborious cycle of 
activity, — that which may be termed centri- 
fugal and centripetal forces raising the stem 
and extending the root with all that precision 
with which the planets are held in orbit. 
And the purpose of securing for itself peren- 
nial life demands avoidance of injury to both 
root and stem, and often by a twist on the 
part of one and the putting forth of thorns 
and prickles on the part of the other the plant 
will steadily oppose itself to those destruc- 
tive influences arising from environment or 
through foreign invasion, so showing that 
plant energy is as persistent as human 
energy. Has not a plant splintered a rock 
in order to get foot room, has it not turned 
aside from subterranean obstacles sensed 
without touch of rootlet? And what con- 
tortions are made, the gyrating stem turn- 
ing upon itself at need of support when 
its course is straight as a driven stake, the 
point desired at last reached ! A plant 
puts forth a stem in place of a leaf, and 
with this green finger tip awaits a propitious 
moment when, aided by the rising wind, it 



14 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

will approach a sturdy neighbor, and lo, the 
finger becomes a hook as strong as a parrot's 
beak, and thus moored the plant laughs in 
ruddy flowers and purple berries, garland- 
ing Hving shores of green in grateful pro- 
fusion. 

It is pleasant to consider the manoeuvres 
of plants in their effort to establish them- 
selves happily in the land of their nativity, 
for it is in observation of these manoeuvres is 
perceived that sensitiveness, fatuously limited 
to animal life, is developed in so-called inani- 
mate life to a remarkable degree, and this too 
even in barren places, the desert abounding 
in so-called sensitive plants, there, as else- 
where, indeed, though in less degree, a con- 
cordant action being exercised to the end of 
overcoming unpropitious conditions. On the 
desert is found the cactus, whose leaves are a 
reservoir of Hving water distilled from the 
atmosphere and whence is slaked the thirst 
of the hungry bud rising from amid a prickly 
guard, sentinels of this queen nymph, whose 
glory of color at last declares the chemics 
of the plant wisely combined those chemics 
maintained in equable proportion through- 
out the flowering period in the leaf's distil- 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 15 

lery, and whose abundance is maintained by 
the limitation of the circumference of each 
plant, that apparent arid space between 
neighbors a security to individual distilla- 
tion. 

Equal prevision is exercised by the sand 
verbsena, its unctuous leaves a means of 
water-supply, this nectar appearing to impart 
such exhilaration to the flowers that they 
exhale fragrance in very delight and thanks- 
giving. And it is but necessary to watch 
the ineffectual invasion of an insect when a 
plant has eliminated from its water tank 
gummy juices to realize the astuteness of its 
devices, while if other examples are needed 
they appear to the observer of the ignorant 
foraging of a lamb whose maturing appetite 
sets it nibbling among those plants which 
have provided against such contingencies by 
a bristling guard of thorns set in tufts or 
in alternate rows. But another testimony 
should be added in order to give full weight 
to the foregoing evidences of the wisdom of 
plants, and that is the manufacture of poi- 
sons, concoctions of the more desperate of 
these children of the earth whose efficacy 
among varied measures adopted for self-pre- 



16 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

servation has given both the poison oak and 
ivy immunity from depredations at flowering 
period, so insuring berries for the late regale- 
ment of hardy birds. And these methods 
of self-preservation are anticipatory to re- 
newed existence by way of the seed wherein 
the spark from the Esse of Life is preserved, 
and it is the care with which the plant pro- 
tects itself in seedtime that declares most its 
wisdom. There is the lacquer covering leaf- 
buds filched by the purloining bee to seal up 
its offspring in safety in a happy imitation 
of the wise trees ; and there is the albumen 
in the lyre-like seed-leaves of the maple, 
where is the cella of the young dryad of 
maple groves ; there are also the plumes 
giving aerial flight to the too numerous 
progeny of the dandelion on whom crowding 
neighbors have the effect to ruffle up their 
mats and destroy the seclusion desired. 

Plants seek a happy environment, hence 
the elasticity of the spiral cases of the lowly 
burr clover which acts as a distributive hand 
providing against that gregariousness that is 
often occasion of poverty and degeneracy. 

Reembodiment, the aim of reproduction, 
among plants is ushered in by structural 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 17 

marvels that would be inconceivable were 
there no visible proofs at our very doors, and 
this event is always an occasion of the ut- 
most glory of color compatible with the situ- 
ation ; and so each denizen of the soil declares 
that Beauty is attribute of Being. Such is 
the declaration of the orchid afloat on ex- 
tended petals in the air — a mimic butterfly, 
image of immortality. 

But it is unnecessary to give examples ; 
for is it not well established among plants 
that the ritual of Aphrodite demands adorn- 
ment, the secret reason for diverse prefer- 
ences known only to the plant, specialized 
chemics providing variation satisfactory to 
all concerned ? — giving the red of the rose, 
the purple of the heliotrope and yellow of 
the daffodil, the color of each flower show- 
ing individuality respected by the flower 
lover, who views with disfavor a blue rose, 
for example, or a rose-red water-lily, Hving 
snowflake of the lake, — these changes a 
misguided miscegenation destructive to the 
manifest individuality of the plant. It is an 
arrogant man, indeed, who intrudes himself 
into the affairs of nature, who recolors plants, 
depriving them of the results of self-develop- 



18 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ment ! Is it an improvement to crowd 
the single-petaled flower with duplications 
twisted and misshapen, that, trespassing 
upon the marriage altar, are like a hustling 
crowd of inebriates ? 

There are conditions which nature has 
laid down to human nature, wise as it is, 
and these unheeded, chaos results. Even a 
pope might not dictate with impunity in his 
own church when a Michael Angelo had 
brush in hand ! 

Nature's workshop is the temple of art, 
the artisans the living flowers, each having 
preferences that lie in the path of purposes 
known only to itself; and who among the 
greater authorities of the earth is equal to 
dictation, these purposes, occasion of all the 
flower's manoeuvres, unknown ? 

Plants breathe, eat, and drink ; coil, recoil, 
pierce the soil with a force opposed to aught 
less dense than a rock, which, however, 
awaiting the helpful fingers of frost it shoul- 
ders and thrusts apart, thus gaining admit- 
tance to the succulent breast of the earth. 
And, like the young of the human species, 
plants are born princes, demanding regal 
attendants around their cradles, Aj^ollo and 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 19 

Diana their foster-parents. Observe the dan- 
delion, so often ruthlessly shorn by the sickle. 
Year by year it lays its green mat, sends 
up a hollow stem hke an elfin's pipe, and 
fabricates first a miniature sun and then a 
marvelous sphere, delicate, aerial, which a 
breath from zephyr thieves destroys. 

Members of a lowly republic, these dem- 
ocratic flowers maintain themselves against 
all odds, and in princely fashion, Buddhas, 
they sit upon their mats in right royal man- 
ner, a single majesty that does not rob them 
of the dominance of numbers, for, as in a 
republic, each individual rules to the ex- 
treme limit of his door-mat, his neighbor rul- 
ing in like manner. The lowlier species are 
crowded out, though their right of occu- 
pancy is indisputable. And this is the re- 
sult of prevision, for did not the dandelion 
give wing to its seed for the purpose of 
occupying just such a plateau? Profound, 
indeed, are the meditations of these our 
golden-disked Buddhas ! 

Thoughts are known in deeds, and it is 
evident that all nature exercises a degree of 
understanding, even the most minute organ- 



20 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ism possessing a certain consciousness.^ And 
this understanding is curiously politic, a sub- 
tilty marking adaptive devices that applied 
in human affairs would insure success. 

But plant wisdom, it should be remem- 
bered, is circumscribed to single motives, for 
its preferences exist and are exercised to the 
end of seK-perpetuation. A signal evidence 
of this fact is shown in its preparation of 
food in anticipation of the critical appetite 
of the germinating state when the embryo 
dies if not so fed, being unable to take the 
ordinary sustenance of its mature state ; 
without this food, indeed, all vegetal Hfe 
would cease : those oak-groves, whose leaves 
suppHed chaplets to the druid as their 
branches a natural temple for the mystic 
rites, were developed from a seed provided 
with this pap ; the maples with their grand 
glory of color, and the pines, whose stems 
furnish masts to the winged ship, — both 
plant and tree dependent alike on the labo- 
ratory wherein was made the magic food. 

No chance provision, no accidental condi- 
tions are the nourishers of the infant plant. 

^ It has been said of the human organism that its every 
cell gives evidence of faint consciousness. 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 21 

It is an intelligent protective act of the 
plant, itseK the informed chemist of nature 
who prepared for the offspring's early need. 
Provisional variation of color and form are 
the lesser marvels of plant wisdom surely, 
when compared with these previsions of a 
state of helplessness in anticipation of which 
such dehcate labor of the little plant mother 
is done. A most interesting example of 
wisdom in these children of the earth, how 
suggestive of the intellectuality of the forces 
of life ! Mind coming in contact with mat- 
ter electrifies it ; so dust itself, permeated 
throughout with the fiery particle of Being, 
is, as it were, metamorphosed into a Pyro- 
zoma. 

But it is not to be forgotten that this 
wisdom, which is an attribute of life and im- 
minent in all things, in the plant is exercised 
to the end of self-preservation, the plant be- 
ing determined at all odds to live again ; 
beauty of form, beauty of color, food for its 
young, subserving the one object of repro- 
duction, — a combination of activities trium- 
phant only in securing renewal of life by 
way of " seed of its own kind." 

True of plants, this purpose and desire 



22 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

permeates and directs the habits of animate 
life. " I must live," is the declaration of 
every creature. " I must and will live ! " 
As in the lower organism so in the higher ; 
as in the plant so in the animal ; higher or- 
ganisms determining on perpetuity of exist- 
ence, the animal exercising all ingenuity and 
force of will to that end. 

The wisdom exercised by the plant would 
be impossible if it did not possess some de- 
gree of consciousness, and it is this conscious- 
ness of its own existence that is incentive 
in endeavor to preserve that existence ; for 
it is not supposable that methods discrimi- 
natingly employed according to environment 
are unconscious or automatic. The plant's 
consciousness is not, however, differentiated 
in kind from that of those brainless creatures 
of the lower kingdom of the so-called ani- 
mate world who have wit to employ means 
of self-preservation, for consciousness is the 
same in one as the other, it being a preroga- 
tive of life. 

Life is not dependent on matter, living 
cells multiplying and flourishing in the en- 
tire absence of matter ; ^ their activity, it 

' Louis Pasteur. 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 23 

should be remembered, result of self-con- 
sciousness ; for where life is there is con- 
sciousness — and mind. Furthermore, where 
is consciousness there is determination on 
perpetuity. And, so great is this determina- 
tion, many forms of life become increasingly 
pugnacious. Thus, among plants, poisons, 
thorns, and prickles were invented ; among 
animals, horns ; among fish, swords ; among 
birds, talons ; each armored for the purpose 
of self-protection ; and it is well known that 
to protect their offspring birds offer their own 
Hves, and this that they may live again, — 
in effect by losing their life they find it ! 

And here it may be asked, if perpetuity 
is the aim of lower animate life, is it not of 
the highest animate life ? Does not man 
equally aspire to live again, and shall it 
be concluded that he also gains his desire 
through offspring? 

But no, and for the reason that man is 
unable to reproduce his counterpart in off- 
spring, his individuality a possession impos- 
sible to another. Individuality is limited to 
class in lower animate life, while extended 
to persons among men. Each man is an 
integer, a single being, whose personality is 



24 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

unmistakable, and the distinctness of his in- 
dividuality is maintained as unvaryingly as 
that distinction which is maintained between 
diverse species in lower animal life. But does 
not this singleness of being, which is impos- 
sible to be conveyed to offspring, place man 
among the least fortunate of his brethren, 
the beasts and birds? 

What object is served in this marvelous 
structural perfection wherein individualism 
is evolved, if hfe is less satisfactorily 
maintained and perpetuated? Consider the 
cedars, — the giants of the Sierras, — how 
the centuries pass hke clouds, vanishing in 
the horizon, their lives unimperiled. Invent- 
ing means of self-preservation as formidable 
as the armature evolved by lower organisms, 
shall man be unable to prolong his life even 
to the average life of this tree whose struc- 
ture is far less complex than the hmnan or- 
ganism ? He has the desire for perpetuity 
of Hfe and seeks it with a constancy that 
is unsurpassed by plant or animal, and all 
methods fail ! 

There are organisms in the sea whose term 
of existence is unlimited, but this degenerate 
lives but a half century, at the widest span 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 25 

little more than a century ! Were he a worm 
subject to metamorphoses, an unending cycle 
of existence were his ; and the life of a worm 
has its winged epoch, its hour of joy, when, 
floating in the air a delicate frigate, its sails 
living: winffs gemmed and rainbowed, it 
secures its perpetuity. And compared with 
this marvel how coarse is the frame of man ! 
Human nature is incomparable with nature 
in refinement if considered apart from its 
moral and intellectual possibihties ; as an 
animal, indeed, man is inferior to his sires ; 
in most directions outstripping the highest 
physical evolution, successes compassed by 
throes the imagination fails to picture, and 
in which all energy was appHed in battling 
the way upward to security, he has missed 
the mark ! But no, that structural complete- 
ness fulfills a purpose of grand import. It 
gives an arena for thought, and thought in 
turn prepares the way to the individual, to 
judicious selection and choice which is the 
basis of the individualism which is man's 
special prerogative at the very turning-point 
where is apparent degeneracy, the brain serv- 
ing for activities that are immanent in the 
structure of the flower, the leaf, nest of bird, 



26 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

cell of bee, web of spider, and the columnar 
stateliness of the tree. In effect the human 
brain is the crownino^ achievement of the toil 
and address of the energies of hfe, the evolu- 
tion of mentahty represented by and parallel 
to physical evolution and equally slow as the 
process which from the reptile developed the 
bird — a crowning achievement ! And man's 
mentality, rich with the argosy of nature's 
ideals, is characterized by that marvelous 
power which changed the hiss of the snake 
to the cadenza of the lark, so transfiguring 
natural phenomena and glorifying it. 

The human mind may be likened to 
that lord of the air in Mexican myth, who, 
perceiving the radiance of the leaves in 
autumn, breathed upon them, when each 
leaf, detaching itself, rose singing above the 
hills, the air becoming peopled with vari- 
colored birds : for after this manner the 
human mind transfigures the real into ideal 
life. And, a receptacle of nature's imagery, 
human nature is endowed with not only its 
charm, but its continuity, for it is in man's 
mentality that the law of perpetuity, object 
of evolution, is at its apex of power; and 
thus in defeat man becomes victor. 



PURPOSE IN DEVICES OF PLANTS 27 

A myth is recorded in the Egyptian Book 
of the Dead, so-called, illustrated by a har- 
vest scene, located in a valley surrounded by 
four rivers. This valley, fertilized by the 
rivers, is filled with grain whose stalks are 
many cubits high, towering, indeed, far above 
the head of the harvester, who is seen with 
sickle in hand amidst the grain, the results 
of his labor suggested by the broken stalks 
near him. This harvester, it appears from 
the text, is an Immortal, and the grain is 
Truth, claimed to be the food and sustenance 
of human souls, and without which man dies 
as the embryo of the plant dies without the 
food prepared by the little mother-plant in 
the vegetal world. In this curious fashion 
the priests of Egypt, while recognizing the 
desire universal to humanity for personal 
immortality, points out a means whereby it 
may be attained. 



n 

SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 

The life of each plant is a protest against 
the accusation that variation and modifica- 
tion in the realm of inanimate nature are 
mechanical. Indeed, to claim that the least 
atom possessing life is without intelligence 
is in effect to shut the door of the universe 
in God's face; and the audacity of this 
claim is the more apparent from observa- 
tion of the slow development in man of a 
sense of that proportion which gives grace 
to the object of his invention, as compared 
with the immediate sense of proportion in the 
insect and bird species. 

Compare the " dug-out " of the Indian 
woman with the shaft of the burial beetle, 
or her tent with the silken den of the mason 
spider, what ingenuity and adaptation of 
means to an end on the part of the little 
folk, familiars of air and earth — and what 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 29 

thriftless oblivion to means near by and, so to 
speak, thrust upon the womian ! 

And while invention, that universal gift 
to animate life, - prompts the least atom of 
intelligent life to form-making as the most 
highly developed and representative, it is a 
mistake to imagine that there is no delight 
in proportion and even in details of struc- 
ture. It was the privilege of the writer to 
witness the making of their nest by a pair 
of hummingbirds, in which the painstaking 
of the two birds was not less evident than 
the satisfaction when the nest was completed, 
this satisfaction shown in particular by the 
female, which, having made many voyages 
into far fields with her mate for the purpose 
of gathering thistle-top, fibre from palms, 
and lichen from the woods, all to be apphed 
in construction, after a little period of ab- 
sence appeared alone and alighting on the 
supporting bough carefully inspected the 
nest outside and inside, her movements 
amusingly feminine, the head turned now 
and then sideways, an air of connoisseurship 
in general poise of body, as also an " I 
thought so ! " when a defect was discovered, 
this prompting the application of a sharp 



30 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

bill, when a refractory fibre was pulled away 
from the outer rim of the nest to be re- 
placed afterward, and so adjusted that all 
was smooth and compact. And this accom- 
plished, a renewed survey appeared to give 
satisfaction, and the little householder set- 
tled down upon the supporting bough, her 
breast against the outside of the nest, the 
alert air now vanishing, her demeanor giving 
an evidence not only of content but pleasure. 
How long the little bird would have remained 
in quiet enjoyment it is impossible to con- 
jecture, for in a few moments her spirited 
liege darted into the shady nook and with 
an incisive note awoke his mate to her duties, 
and in an instant there was a twirl and flash 
of wings, and the pair vanished. 

Perfection and adaptation of means to 
ends is characteristic of nest structures, the 
more dainty the builder, indeed, the greater 
the refinement of sentiment, a more astute 
judgment ever characterizing the little folk 
of God. This is illustrated in comparing the 
hummingbird's nest mentioned above and an 
eagle's nest, the nicety of the former sug- 
gesting a Cellini dexterity, the beak of the 
bird doing duty for the hand of the artisan. 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 31 

In most cases the bird's beak suggests 
more directness than finesse ; the hand, how- 
ever, suggests both finesse and directness 
according to position, and when the thumb 
and finger meet care is expressed, the other 
fingers curled away in the palm or out- 
stretched as anxious but distant coadjutors. 
But if all fingers are curled, the thumb lock- 
ing them in, a blow may be anticipated. 
The human fist in effect is not unlike the 
spider as to outward appearance when that 
insect has hold of its silken rope and so 
swinging awaits its prey. 

The spider's agility is equal to the hand's 
dexterity, if the hand is directed in search of 
food ; but supposing, for instance, the object 
be decorative, as in the case of the construc- 
tion of a Cellini vase (to continue the illus- 
tration used above), — invention here applied 
to the aesthetic, and in obedience to the love 
of the beautiful, — shall parallel be found 
then ? Is a spider endowed with perception 
of proportion and dehcacy of outline, dictat- 
ing beauty of design ? Consider her labor, 
did she spin as perfectly as CelHni delineated ? 
Let the microscope number the strands of her 
silken rope, and the eye trace its interlace- 
ment against the radiant sky ! 



32 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

There was more than sentiment in the 
impersonation of the spider by the Greek, as 
it betrays the instinct for which his people 
became leaders in the world of ideal form. 
The ideal proportion and completeness of 
design in nature of which the Greek was 
imitator is reluctantly classed as representa- 
tive of aesthetic feeling ; but it is difficult to 
discriminate between causes that produce 
like results, and the history of man declares 
that when invention was appHed for utihta- 
rian purposes, decoration was practiced. 

Is not the bower-bird's arch a remarkable 
instance of decorative instinct ? And who 
has not witnessed the disappointment, nay, 
petulant wrath, of a winged builder when 
the nest proved unshapely ? Surely the ori- 
ginal concept, based on love of proportion, is 
occasion of that imperious disdain followed 
by immediate demolition of the structure ! 

Structural instincts, in which purity of 
line such as dictated the construction of the 
Parthenon, lie deep in the mysteries of that 
insect life which spins and weaves tent and 
cradle ; nor is it possible to assert that a con- 
scious aesthetic sentiment does not have an 
influence upon methods applied in the labor, 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 33 

since this labor is prompted by affections 
on which may be predicated both will and 
understanding-, these attributes shown by 
nice discriminations, a fastidiousness in selec- 
tion of building materials, for instance, or of 
a mate, love even among insects demanding 
perfection, while the judgment when so exer- 
cised is as unerring as it is rigorous. And 
it is that conscious selection and discrimina- 
tion in the least form of animate life which 
betrays the trend of nature, all things by a 
common consent climbing the golden stair 
of self-development. 

The votive offering, first fabricated by 
woman, was prompted by the universal evi- 
dence of sentiments akin to her own among: 
forces assumed to be deific controlling life ; 
but the purpose, it should be remembered, 
which dictated the offerino- was a desire for 
protection for herself and offspring, and in 
this respect she was moved by feelings kin- 
dred to those which prompted protective de- 
vices in lower animate and inanimate life. 
That these deific forces would be pleased 
with her offering she was assured of by the 
instincts of her own heart; and herein ap- 
pears the feeling that attests to powers of 



34 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

imagination that the lives of plants and ani- 
mals give no evidence of, their inventions 
disclosing a systematic self-reliance, neither 
appeal nor token of trust on other power 
than that which is of immediate experience 
being indicated. 

But the earliest votive offerings are often 
destitute of attractiveness in texture or in 
form, imagination seeming to have no effect 
in the fabrication of these objects, if sug- 
gesting their consecration. 

The cup that the Sicilian Greek placed 
at the entrance of the majestic temple 
now shrineless on the Mediterranean shore, 
brought to view by the ploughshare of the 
husbandman, is a crude invention compared 
with the nest of a bird. Primitive skill was 
inapt and clumsy, little suggestive of that 
after skill which chipped away at the Pen- 
telic marble, discovering a god. 

And these votive offerings were of ad- 
vanced completeness of design compared 
with the primitive temples, those being but 
rude constructions and hidden retreats built 
by men for men. 

And herein was Adam's second blunder, 
for the primeval woman is the originator of 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 35 

decorative art. With something of the fastidi- 
ousness of the hummingbird, her awakening 
intuitions demanded somewhat better than 
the lairs which primeval men constructed as 
fanes in honor of deific forces, the gods of 
sun and rain, a development of woman's taste 
and skill occurring at a comparatively early 
period, — this shown by the oriole-like cradle 
she invented for her offspring, and her fea- 
ther and bead work, these being accomplish- 
ments possessed by her at the period when 
the primitive temple bore little evidence of a 
sentiment for the beautiful. And, moreover, 
it is due to woman that these primitive struc- 
tures were at length graced by ceremonial 
robes and sacred vessels, these being of her 
manufacture. It was she who figured those 
devices on the ceremonial robes and sacred 
vessels which subsequently through associa- 
tion were used as a sacred text, she unwit- 
tingly thus originating a pictographic writ- 
ing. But it is a curious anomaly that while 
woman actually invented a symbolism that ex- 
pressed the purport of the consecrated build- 
ing, many figures of which are retained in 
decorative ecclesiastical art, she was long re- 
garded as a baleful influence, and her entrance 



36 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

into the temple a doubtful expedient. It is 
true that this sentiment, if not so acknow- 
ledged, was due to man's frailty, to bar 
against which he assumed her more frail, an 
attitude easily maintained, since the primeval 
woman was but half -child and half -animal, her 
first instinct demanding of her the construc- 
tion of a home-place, a tepee, as the bird's 
instinct demands a nesting-place. And shel- 
ter was the primary incentive to domestic 
architecture, whereas rites of worship de- 
manded security from interruption, the idea 
of personal shelter being small incentive, 
kirkly luxuries the last to be demanded. 
An analysis, indeed, of the motives of temple 
building discloses that the incentive was not 
a desire for physical comfort, but for seclu- 
sion, so imperious was this idea, the govern- 
ino- motif is an exclusion of the outside 
world, the purpose of the structure, however 
simple or elaborate, not to give light but 
to exclude it, the window, in fact, unknown 
until long after advance in structural com- 
pleteness had been made in other direc- 
tions. 

Furthermore, the desire for seclusion, de- 
manded and effected by darkness, influenced 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 37 

the proportions of the structure to the limita- 
tion of space for enshrinement of the divinity, 
as also restricting the movements of the de- 
votee. The temples of Eg-ypt were charac- 
terized by this effort at seclusion, as also 
the Doric temples of Greece. So universal 
a custom suggests a common sentiment, a 
sentiment that was inculcated by nature. It 
had been perceived that great forces, the 
movers, as Dante terms them, are unseen, 
and it was conjectured, doubtless, that these 
forces, these gods, desired seclusion, hence, 
notwithstanding the Egyptians and Hellenes, 
for example, were sun-worshipers, their prin- 
cipal gods, Ra and Apollo, solar divinities, 
their temples were so constructed that they 
seem to exclude, by barring out light, the 
very god to whom they were dedicated ! 
And this seclusion demanded devices that 
had little regard to internal structure ; it 
was sufficient that publicity was avoided. 
Although the principal forms of architecture, 
the so-called Trabeate and the Gothic, re- 
present eras in the development of ideas 
respecting the divine power governing the 
universe, there is the same determination to 
set apart a place of seclusion in the methods 



38 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of construction, and within which should be 
enshrined the oracle or idol. The Trabeate 
style, for example, which the Greeks brought 
to such perfection, suggests solidity, — the 
solidity of a block, the cella representative 
of a sentiment of profound reserve that is 
entirely out of keeping with the open life of 
an ingenuous people, the added columns, 
while suggesting illumination, being foils to 
the temple's sombre interior, reminding one 
of the white-stemmed trees at the entrance 
of a grotto. Forest rites, and the worship 
of the grove and grotto, were all in harmony 
with this sentiment, and the methods of con- 
struction followed the dictation of these asso- 
ciations, a sentiment that declared itself in 
both mimetic rites, which were secret, and the 
form of the temple. 

Publicity violated the sensitive gods, and 
seclusion their choice it provided a security 
to their residence within the consecrated 
places of concealment ; thus, though not for 
his own shelter, it was for the shelter of the 
gods which the constructive instincts of 
man were evoked, a shelter that was a secret 
place, a region of shadow and silence. 

In Egypt, it is true, there was always a con- 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 39 

sideration as to the point whence arose the 
sun. It appeared desirable that the temple 
in its outward aspect should face that lumi- 
nary, and there seems to be some reminiscent 
concept which ruled this orientation of the 
temple such as was held in Peru, where, how- 
ever, the sun had freer access to the interiors 
than in Egypt. But it is to be remembered 
that in worship the ancients of South Amer- 
ica secured seclusion by means of height and 
which the pyramidal buildings offered. Se- 
clusion by height had advocates in the Ori- 
ent; but the sentiment is observable in later 
annals of temple building when the custom 
obtained of erecting temples upon eminences 
overlooking their environment. This senti- 
ment is shown in the selection of the locality 
for the Parthenon in Athens. But if no 
eminence was obtainable the building itself 
was raised, by which means it might tower 
above all adjacent structures. And it is of 
interest to note that the Talmud specially 
commands that the synagogue shall be erected 
upon a hill, this , to be done in accordance 
with the prophecy of Isaiah (ii. 2) that " the 
Lord's house should be established in the 
top of the mountains and exalted above the 



40 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

hills." The Jewish rabbis have regarded 
this prophecy of such imperious influence 
that they claimed that any city in which the 
houses towered above the synagogue ulti- 
mately would be destroyed. " A parallelo- 
gram ^ in shape, the basihca form of structure 
suggested possibiHties that were incentive to 
various changes. The first basilica (Basilica 
Porcia, 82 b. c.) was a place of market and 
exchange, the most perfect of which is yet 
to be seen at Pompeii (Trajan's Basihca). 
This style of structure remained without 
modifications until adopted by the Christians 
for a place of worship, the basihca then be- 
coming in course of various changes an ob- 
long hall divided by rows of columns into a 
wide central nave and lower side aisles over 
which in some cases was placed a gallery. 
The central space was lighted by windows in 
the upper part of its side walls (the clere- 
story of Gothic buildings). An example of 
the Christian basihca, that of St. Paul, Rome, 
represents very adequately the later develop- 
ment of the original form and which is of pe- 
culiar interest in this connection. Prefixed 

^ See Masks, Heads, and Faces, on the antiquity of this 
{orm. 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 41 

to the oblong space of this church is a porch 
(the narthex), to which alone the neophytes 
and penitents were admitted, a new feature 
in the construction, but which suggests the 
old sentiment of reserve and avoidance of 
publicity. But this was not sufficient ; other 
discriminations and reserves were therefore 
obtained through an extension at the rear 
and east end of the building where was 
built a cross wall containing in the centre 
an arched way which led into the transept 
effected by the cross wall. And the space 
so provided was occupied at service by the 
clergy, for here was the bishop's throne. An 
altar stood between this place of distinction 
and that arranged for the people in the hall. 
Under this altar was a crypt containing in 
most cases the body of the saint to whom the 
buildino- had been dedicated. 

Thus it is observed that together with this 
a2)se at the east and the narthex at the west, 
there yet remained the old tradition of inter- 
diction and unapproachableness as also ob- 
servance of the movements of the sun. 

This building is representative, and may 
be regarded as prototype of the simpler 
churches of the New England village, where 



42 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the gallery, windows, the raised platform and 
pulpit in the rear, together with a vestibule 
at the entrance, are examples of methods of 
construction determined by the early Chris- 
tians in their modification of the Roman ba- 
siHca. The New England church demanded 
lis-ht, and hence the two rows of windows 
at side of the oblong hall ; — dim Hght was 
not desirable to the Puritan and Pilgrim, to 
whom seclusion often suggested hiding from 
justice. 

But if the simpler structures of worship 
of to-day trace their lineage from modifica- 
tions of the Roman basilica, so may the more 
elaborate forms, — the Romanesque building 
is a descendant in the same line, and it is the 
Roman builder's introduction of the arch first 
applied by the Etruscans to the construction 
of drains, bridges, and aqueducts that made 
possible those changes in the interior of the 
basilica wherein was provided greater space 
without incumbering the floor. The arch 
was known to the Egyptians and Greeks, 
but it was applied after the manner of the 
Etruscans, and never promoted to the use to 
which it was applied by the Roman Chris- 
tians. It came into ecclesiastical architec- 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 43 

tiire by demand for space and a new-born 
desire for light. As a provision for light 
the arches were carried by columns on each 
side of the nave to a sufficient height to clear 
the roofs of the side-aisles and admit win- 
dows to light the central nave. 

The arch in this useful capacity does not 
fail, however, of expression in harmony with 
the sentiment that demanded space and light, 
for the movement of the hne is more bhthe- 
some than the spring of Atalanta's instep ; 
it is expressive of both buoyancy and an in- 
vitation to enter. When spanning the full 
current of the Tiber it gave but a hint of its 
possibilities, for, when introduced into church 
architecture, beneath it multitudes of men 
passed and repassed, the full tide of human- 
ity observant of the sentiment of consecra- 
tion which distinguishes the human spirit. 

The Romanesque style of plain vaulting 
had many modifications : from it springs the 
Byzantine which is characterized by the 
dome. This curious adaptation of the vault, 
unless most happily proportioned as in case 
of St. Peter's dome, as a means of expression 
is not as desirable as the spire ; it is too often 
suggestive of obtuseness where should reign 



44 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

aspiration ; like the use of the thiimh in place 
of the index finger, it fails of demonstration. 
Of necessity contracted in size, it may not ex- 
ceed a miniature beauty contrasted to the im- 
measurable vault of the sky. A city of domes 
is too like a knoll of mushrooms highly ac- 
centuated, and when compared with a city of 
spires it loses by contrast, as in martial pomp 
painted warriors bearing clubs are less effec- 
tive than soldiers armed with spears. 

But Byzantine and the Romanesque are 
initiatory to a form of building which ex- 
ceeds each in the development of expression : 
Gothic architecture, having its roots deep in 
the primary processes which demanding con- 
secration had induced the primitive structure 
of boughs, earth, or stone, has a breadth of 
expression that can only be compared to the 
expansive powers of the human intellect, 
whence is its growth and initiation. And 
the history of Gothic architecture is similar 
to that of painting and music, for it is the 
French builder on the Rhine who seized upon 
the Romanesque and enthusiastically carried 
it to such marvelous perfection, his countrymen 
constructing in rapid succession the cathedrals 
of Paris, Amiens, Rouen, and the rest. And 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 45 

after the French the English add new fea- 
tures, so showing that, as music, architecture 
is impressed by racial characteristics ; for not- 
withstanding its introduction into England 
by the Normans (1066), the English followed 
out notions of their own which are always 
imperious if more restful than their neigh- 
bors' across the Channel. The English cathe- 
dral suggests soHdity, the French grace and 
directness as also compactness and finish, the 
two styles specialized in the form of the apse, 
which with the English terminates squarely 
and with rigor of decision, while the French 
is circular, as when the extension was intro- 
duced into the Roman basilica. And the 
French cathedral emphasizes height, while 
the English suggests mass demanding room. 

But all Gothic architecture is characterized 
by qualities that are interpretive of ideals 
that have found expression by means of eth- 
ical progress. In mass, proportion, thrust, 
arch, space, and support there may be read 
the evolution of the builder's skill, but also 
the successive demand of the human spirit 
for opportunity for expression and self-mani- 
festation throuofh visualized form. 

The perpendicular and horizontal lines 



46 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

prominent in the temples of Egypt and 
Greece are representative of calmness and en- 
during strength, for the ancients constructed 
their buildings v/ithout appreciation of light- 
ness. As an expression of aspiration, the arch, 
opposed to their idea of fixedness, was used 
but as a bearer of burdens, a resistant power 
to superincumbent weight. In Italy, as in 
Greece and Egypt, the Trabeate style was 
used until Christianity demanded room for 
the multitude, whose needs, desires, and woes 
were believed to be of special interest to the 
divinity whom the Founder of the New Era 
had manifested. The introduction of the 
arch marked an era in the growth of the hu- 
man spirit ; it also expressed the sentiment of 
welcome, entrance undebarred. 

The altar of the arcuated structure was 
object of the decorative skill of the noble 
women of Rome, access to its steps undenied. 
The urgency of sentiment that was insti- 
gation of the votary cup or the meal bowl 
fabricated by the brown and red women of 
the East and West respectively, and conse- 
crated to divinity, penetrated the household 
of the pagan to its final dedication to the 
new service. Attractiveness of interiors were 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 47 

invitation to worshipers, and finally there 
was scarcely a building site in Rome that 
was not secured for the new structure. And 
this impetus was felt in all parts of the world ; 
the building instinct aroused, there was 
scarcely a city in Italy, Germany, and France 
but that had an example of Gothic architec- 
ture. 

But the structure of Gothic architecture 
is marked by developments that show a dis- 
tinct impress and serial growth. 

Construction is experimental with man ; 
the bee has her plan mapped out anteriorly, 
so also the ant ; these builders, obedient to 
a law that lies deep in the chemics of crys- 
tals and plants, do not vary in their con- 
struction except by way of avoidance of 
obstacles, this declaring that obedience to 
be a conscious act. 

The human spirit evolves its schemes tar- 
dily, and only at the instigation of an im- 
pulse which, though not more imperious, is 
derived from sentiments whose import is 
related to psychic development. For the his- 
tory of architecture begins when the human 
spirit recognized its kinship to the unseen 
forces, and sought their alliance. 



48 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

When there was but the woodland with 
its overarching branches and the vaulted 
cavern in the breast of the mountain wherein 
there was retreat, nature enforced lessons 
of form-making by her numerous army of 
builders whose decorations ever followed 
construction, and whose proportion and mass 
never exceeded but always responded to de- 
mand. But these lessons, as lessons in har- 
mony by means of the winged choristers, 
were not learned for long ages, and then 
only when the democratic doctrine of mu- 
tualism was enforced through the doctrine 
of the Founder of Christianity whose tenet 
of mutualism, — practiced by lower forms of 
animate life, — nature's leash applied to 
ferocity of instincts, — demanded the ex- 
panded aisles and the vault for a common 
consecration and neighborly communion. 

And yet the new structure did not abolish 
old sentiments: the ceremonial and the object 
lesson at the altar together with the early 
and primitive form of appeal remained (which 
its concerted dance expressed), and the two 
great divisions of architecture, the Gothic 
and Trabeate, are each monuments of the 
majestic current of primitive though advan- 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 49 

cing" apprehension of the immanence of di- 
vinity in man, and this exclusive of racial or 
indeed personal limitations, these accentuat- 
ing the universality of Spirit. For man is 
divine, and a creator, inasmuch as he actual- 
izes sentiment and embodies ideas, — the 
serious result of which in moulding; civiliza- 
tion is but faintly outlined in the history of 
national life, although it may be observed 
that as far back as the days when the Osi- 
rian Fete was celebrated upon the Nile a 
peculiar vein of seriousness entered into the 
hymns sung on the occasion ; the joyousness 
of the primitive dance ceremonials at the an- 
nual vernal resurrection relapsing into greater 
thoughtfulness, the result of a higher intel- 
lectualism. And later this tendency shows 
itself among the Hellenes, that " blitheness '* 
which pervaded the Pan Athenaic Fetes suc- 
ceeded by reflection and profound question- 
ing at the gates of Life. The grip and stress 
of self-development give an austerity to the 
human spirit, and it may be imagined that the 
unadorned shrine, if encircled by columns 
like shafts of light, was typical of the Hel- 
lenic mind. Apollo, failing to strike his lute, 
waits as the devotee might at the steps of his 



50 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

temple, for vagaries filled the human spirit 
and beautiful imaginings, these but stray 
winds upon the strings of the celestial lute, 
not the touch of the divine hand of the god 
of light. 

Perpetuity by means of sohdity is one of 
the primary ideas in the construction of the 
temple, wherefore the stone in place of the 
wooden structure in the Trabeate style of 
architecture, while the idea is definitely sug- 
gested by mass and sufficient support, low 
walls and needful adjustment of parts. 

Thus form and substance embodied an 
idea, — that idea so insistent that temple and 
tomb in Egypt manifested its importance, 
nay, more, the method of burial declared its 
weight with overwhelming proof. Human 
nature did not differ from plant and animate 
Hfe in this idea, however, but in a special 
solicitude for personal perpetuity. It was 
not from intention to insure continuity of 
existence, indeed, that set this ingenuous 
people to preserving the body of the dead, 
the principle of life forbidding the possi- 
bility of extinction. They had long known 
the perpetuity of existence — intuitionally, 
an intuition that makes it more difficult for 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 51 

the human mind to entertain the idea of dis- 
continuance than continuance and with all 
the appearances to the contrary, so far as 
objective cognition is concerned. Death in 
fact is inconceivable to mind, nor can we 
find the word in science, as also it was not 
conceived by ignorance. 

The childlike method resorted to in Egypt 
to preserve the dead was a similar device to 
the substitution of pictured foods for the re- 
galement of the dead in place of actual food 
offering's. In both cases the method was 
mimetic and depended on what was deemed 
the spiritual being supposed to be attached 
hke a shadow to all substances, which if 
animistic is not far from a very idealistic 
notion. The ancient view that the dead have 
no shadow is a proof of similar idealism, as 
also of realism, for believed to belong to the 
court of the suns of heaven, they were bodies 
of light and without shadow. 

In these views, though seemingly far afield 
from the subject of temple building, there is 
the same looking toward perpetuity, a desire 
for permanence in that which is familiar or 
which is expressive of an ideal. The evanes- 
cent and temporary does not appeal to the 



52 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

human spirit ; it craves the constant and im- 
perishable. And, moreover, the present is 
inadequate except it be prophetic of the 
future. Our ideals are upon the steps of 
eternity ; eager seraphs of the soul, they crowd 
the gates of the unseen awaiting their lift- 
ing to let the winged glories pass through. 

But these ideals are interdependent, their 
very development secured by the law of com- 
mensality which is common to all organic 
life. Vainly is sought the least form of life 
that is not obedient to either commensality 
or mutualism, if in the least these laws of 
life are dominant in the greatest, from the 
former serially up to the latter they have 
sway. Mutualism does not appear, however, 
in the outward appearance of things, for na- 
ture is armed cap-a-pie with subtilty, having 
wit to woo, to capture, and dine. But before 
higher courts she is not crimmal, for there is 
knighthness among beasts ; a Saint Bernard 
will defend a spaniel at odds with a bulldog ! 
And have we not seen how is practiced mu- 
tualism among the polypier, notice being 
given of danger, and when as if by common 
consent the whole family masquerade as a 
budded plant, each hydra as inanimate as a 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 53 

helical plant asleep in shade ? These gre- 
garious children of the deep through the 
branchinof of a collective stem and tufted 
shoots of brilliantly colored hydras are living 
illustration of neighborly love. By mutual 
aid mutual benefit is obtained, sagely asserted 
Homer, while singing of war among men, and 
in nature what is practiced under the waters 
is done above and beyond ; the birds who 
swim and dive are not brigands who seek to 
circumvent but carry out the law, a fine ad- 
justment regulating the birds of prey over 
sea and on land, some vantage ever given to 
the less warlike, — subtilty opposed to valor. 
And the adjustment of the scales of justice 
is occasion of strange partnership, — the 
shark and pilot-fish, the alligator and the 
bird finding mutual benefit by an aUiance of 
forces, these like the hermit crab and sea 
anemones maintaining comfortable existence. 
And this mutual compact and interdependence 
develop warm friendships as also valiant de- 
fenders, the weakness of one animal bringing 
out the courage of another, no true lion 
attacking a mother with her offspring, though 
in the natural order his legitimate prey. 
The law of mutualism as of commensaKsm 



54 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is constructive, it is balance and proportion 
and the means of perpetuity. The equal 
balances held among the lower organisms by 
means of mutualism is like the law of equilib- 
rium in the solar realm, stellar groups main- 
tained in complete integrity through centri- 
petal and centrifugal forces. All poise in 
structure depends on a like associated im- 
pulse of integral parts, and hence the wise 
calculation of the builder, divine or human. 

To complete a structure in which the fu- 
sion of detail affords a concrete expression, 
there is necessity for neighborly accommoda- 
tion, a loan of strength and a diffusion of 
weight while as in the organic world differ- 
entiation is a means of mutual gain. In obe- 
dience to these conditions Gothic architecture 
assumes a representative place in the history 
of form-making, and in its highest examples 
it contrasts with the highest form of the 
Trabeate style by a wider inclusion of those 
symbols which were indented upon the plas- 
tic clay of the votive cup and later inwoven 
in the ceremonial rug, then incised upon 
stone, first the labor of women whose un- 
sinewy frame developed a subtile mentality 
in obedience to the law of compensation, and 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 55 

hence the appropriateness of the name Notre 
Dame of the principal example of Gothic 
temples, even though there had been no other 
reason for, 4ts application. For the woman 
was first to consecrate to divinity the decora- 
tive instinct inherited from the animate and 
inanimate world. 

Gothic architecture is an epitome of na- 
ture's laws in form-making consecrated by 
human nature, and through support, reach, 
thrust, and curve, interlacement, clearance of 
space, and multitudinous ascensions of line 
from floor to ceiling, a mutual movement is 
maintained that, suggesting harmony of pur- 
pose with buoyancy of feeling, assumes the 
form of a grandly completed organism whose 
voice could alone be music. 

But the Gothic in its varied development 
is like natural phenomena, its multitudinous 
ensemble of symbols an organism like the 
human body replete with inherited power, 
its varied functions expression of a series of 
aspirations which crowd upon the imagina- 
tion. And hence the limitation of its great- 
ness, requiring a knowledge of the history of 
the evolution of the human spirit that com- 
prehends the first expression of consecration 



56 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

to the ideal, to the latest aspiration thereto, 
it is yet to be fully interpreted. It may be 
compared to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 
which is a compilation of ideas of centuries 
of symbohsts, beginning with the ideograph 
upon the votive offering and ending with the 
epitaph on the tomb. But these difficulties 
do not oppose themselves to the student of 
the Trabeate form of architecture for it is 
nearly the simplest that could be devised; 
as truly an organism as the Gothic, its func- 
tions are without complexity, their purpose 
apparent and in most cases frankly confessed. 
But while the temple of the Greeks argues 
singleness of idea, and little disposition 
toward the more complex expression of aspi- 
ration, simpHcity ends here. The shrine of the 
Delphic temple, as indeed the entablature of 
the Parthenon, was thronged with images. 
These are as representative of sacred visions 
as the scriptural pictures upon the Roman 
Basilica. And the Greeks not only conse- 
crated their statues of the gods but their 
athletes, their Olympic Games dedicated to 
Zeus, the period of this festival denominated 
God's Peace. 

It is of interest to note in this connection 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 57 

how constant the Greeks remained to an- 
cient traditions, for primitive festivals were 
conducted under the avowed auspices of a 
tutelar deity whose presence was insured by 
the representation of the deity either hy em- 
blem or statue. And it is doubtless due to 
the antiquity of this custom, generations of 
artists devoted to the production of these 
images, that Greek skill culminated in the 
production of the celebrated Olympic Zeus, 
by Phidias, a prodigy of such majestic pro- 
portions that it was claimed that should the 
Father-of-All rise he would unroof the tem- 
ple ! 

It was to this statue ovations were offered 
in the Olympic Games, — to this impersona- 
tion of Zeus the victorious athlete paid his 
tribute together with the gay Greek world, 
and it was at the period of these games when 
Praxiteles, doubtless, presented with glowing 
pride his statue of Hermes. 

Praxiteles's genius illustrates the joyous 
side of the Greek character. After the seri- 
ousness of Phidias it means what the columns 
added to the oiiginal temple meant, a senti- 
ment for the blitheness of nature prevaiHng ; 
it might be said that Phidias' s genius person- 



58 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ifies the intellectiialism of the Hellenes, "while 
Praxiteles discloses their huoyancy, hence 
the production by the latter artist of Hermes, 
a statue modeled upon the typical athlete ; 
the close locks, suave, yielding mouth, nose 
in hio'h rehef but flexible as that of the Hon 

o 

— not aquiline — not vulpme, but a combi- 
nation of lines summarizing- the human per- 
ceptive powers, and so, -well knitted to an 
unmtellectual and femuiine brow, lineaments 
all suo'oestino' s^entle instincts. The mascu- 
line head is high at the crown, a curled 
and fretted crest to the wave-like breadth of 
shoulder, while the deep human-lidded eyes 
emphasize the general address of the whole 
form toward the child, whom in a moment of 
repose the model athlete has, it may be, idly 
picked up — possibly a httle brother, an ur- 
chin well beloved and of promise. Modeled 
upon the Uving athlete, how immediate the 
impression of some hidden allusion to sacred 
story ! The insensate marble betrays the 
athlete's power to vault through the air, 
spurning the earth, so supple seem the 
muscles unweighted by the much hinder- 
ing flesh. There is no demand for the 
winged cap, the winged foot, and the cadu- 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 59 

ceus o£ the conventionalized form of Mer- 
cury ; all is related in the spring and turn of 
the athletic Hmbs, the breadth of shoulders 
suggesting the eagle's charge upon the air 
and final light descent to the earth. And 
the urchin clings to the athlete like a young 
vine to the knot of a tree, so declaring 
himself Dionysus, the young god of wine. 
Hermes looks gently upon the di\ine child, 
that young god of the invisible fires of 
spring which lying perdu within the earth 
finally spring forth in a marvel of clustered 
fruit. 

A messenger from Zeus, Hermes is, in- 
deed, a fitting type of the athletic victor in 
the sacred interim of God's Peace, and in 
this fact there is a world of suggestion. For 
does it not appear that a Greek gymnast 
must needs be godlike? must possess the 
elements of manliness, — of dignity and self- 
respect ? The matchless beauty of the form 
of the athlete demanded qualities which 
make the hero, and when, locking arms as 
the sentle and sinless animals of the field 
lock horns, testing their ability to become 
leader and defender of the herd, the Greek 
athlete wrestled, patient, persistent, impas- 



60 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

sioned, and candid, — no ignoble sleight of 
hand, no mean advantage, but all in an in- 
tegrity of spirit, in the full blaze of the face 
of Zeus sitting beneath the canopy of the 
Temple as beneath the roof of the sky. The 
consecration of the Olympic games, as of the 
toils of authorship, prizes won in either case, 
illustrates that religious tendency of the Hel- 
lenes of which St. Paul speaks. Moreover, it 
is this dedication of both the energies of the 
mind and body to the Father-over- All that 
gave that refinement to Greek art which has 
been the despair of the world, a refinement, 
it may be said here, that demanded a shrine 
for the nude figure, — even the gymnast 
victor's statue having place within the con- 
secrated gymnasia. And as these statues 
were thus inclosed within dedicated areas, it 
it is in the nature of events that they were 
held sacred. Hence the final disposition of 
these statues, first by the spoilers of Athens, 
of Imperial Rome, and later those modern 
despoilers of Western Europe, appear most 
barbarous and vulo-ar. 

o 

The consecration of an object marks its 
worth. The consecration which bade the 
offering cup of the Sicilian Greek, or the 



SENTIMENT IN STRUCTURAL DEVICES 61 

meal-bowl of the Pueblo Indian, as the 
Cellini vase/ the Phidian Zeus in Delphic 
Temple, and the Praxiteles Hermes in the 
temple of Hera, distinguishes the value of 
each object from the equally perfect work 
of animate life. 

Consecration is an appeal to that ideal 
which is a summary of the soul's ideals, — 
an appeal to the Over-Soul, creator and 
source of the true, beautiful, and good. 
The swallow's nest, slightly cruder than the 
terra-cotta cup of the primitive woman, itself 
moulded from clay, is differentiated by means 
of the feeling which prompted their inven- 
tion ; in the one is recognized a self-helpful- 
ness and efficiency that sharpened the bill, 
whetted the gleam of the eager, unabashed 
eye, the whole attitude an epitome of the 
survival of the fittest. In the other, through 
its purpose of appeal, is found self-sacrifice, 
aspiration, and love. Esthetic tendjencies, 
of which Greek art is a phenomenal illustra- 
tion, are discoverable in lower animate life, 
but their influence does not bear the posses- 
sor of these tendencies out of self-conscious- 
ness. There is susceptibility to beauty, but 
there is not adoration. 

^ Mentioned in Cellini's biography. 



62 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

The bower-bird erects an arch by arrange- 
ment of boughs and sticks, upon which is 
laid bright objects for a decorative effect, a 
plateau then is cleared, this adorned with 
whatever will shine in the sun ; and this ac- 
compHshed, the lover invites his mistress to 
enter his temple of love, his egress and in- 
gress beneath the arch an illustration of the 
adaptitude of the device for feminine pleasur- 
ing prior to the duties of wedlock. An ex- 
ample of art for utiHtarian purposes, the 
wisdom of the bower-bird assumes the aspect 
of self-interest, and it is impossible not to 
regard him as something of a coxcomb, at- 
tractive as he is. The leafy arch is not 
consecrated to beauty for beauty's sake, its 
invention is a subtile device of capture simi- 
lar to the leafy temple of primeval man, and 
there was a long ascent to the application of 
the arch to the Roman temple, — if this act 
also included self-interest. Difficult indeed 
the ascent to the point where beauty is its 
own excuse for being. 



Ill 

art; old usages AISTD NEW DEMANDS 

The human spirit's inherent love for the 
true, beautiful, and good is shown by the 
immediate application of inventive power to 
the expression of the ideal when the needs 
of physical life are provided for, an applica- 
tion which is attested in the annals of civ- 
ilization, these annals, as in the history of 
Egypt, for example, displaying a growing 
tendency to subordinate the needs of physi- 
cal life to the contemplation of the ideal, a 
tendency exemplified by those permanent 
monuments that once adorned the Delta of 
the Nile, the ti*ansient habitations of the peo- 
ple long since fallen into decay — the one 
constructed of stone, the other of clay. 

And it is in Egypt's record is found proof 
of the acceleration of that productivity which 
is trait of the human spirit as of lower 
animate life, and which was exerted in the 
invention of ornate objects, grotesque or 



64 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

delicate, massive or fragile, these objects 
consecrated to sentiments characteristic of 
the human soul alone. Proof of produc- 
tivity, this superabundance of ornate objects 
suggests also that reproduction, if shown in 
animate life, is psychic in origin and import, 
while also showing how great the craving of 
the himian spirit for skill to manifest the 
ideal, — love of beauty its impetus and 
guide. 

But though typical, since her annals in- 
clude a civilization of four thousand years, 
Egypt is not a unique example of the ten- 
dencies of the human spirit, for all nations, 
Oriental and Occidental alike, through their 
accumulated treasure of ornate objects, tes- 
tify to their existence, these nations, as indi- 
viduals, seeking the expression of the aesthetic 
and ideal when setting up their lares, and 
when the mere necessities of physical life 
were provided for. It might be said indeed, 
so universal is the invention of the ornate, 
that the human brain is a means of exit for 
ideals which throng the realm whence the 
multitudinous shapes of natural phenomena, 
these opening an avenue to divinity with its 
host the true, beautiful, and good. But 



ART ; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 65 

though the human brain seems to be a pas- 
sive instrument and a wide gateway to the 
crowding ideals, it is subject to circumstance, 
its portals being narrowed by environment, 
hence the slow advance in expression of 
the intrinsically beautiful, the deterrent in- 
fluence of rigorous formulas or stultifying 
conventionality holding back the shining 
host seeking exit from the unseen into visi- 
ble form, a condition pecidiarly exemplified 
in the annals of Egypt, where art, arriving at 
some degree of expression, becomes in a mea- 
sure petrified by conventionality. 

But if influenced by environment, and the 
mind is like a lake reflecting the movements 
and changes of the clouds, these aerial bodies 
at one time fretted by the winds throwing 
across the blue gigantic swan's wings, — or 
at era of storms forming the primeval gro- 
tesque, fantastic monsters that are here and 
there copied on wood and stone, — it is not 
long subject to it, for out of these shapes 
are framed new visions electrified, as it were, 
by sentiment, these the expression of the 
emotions of the soul, — expressions that have 
their place alone in the empire of the ideal, 
ugliness and attractiveness acting on the hu- 



66 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

man spirit much as repulsion and gravitation 
act on elemental nature, so impelling it to 
the choice of the beautiful rather than the 
unseemly. The development of the human 
spirit indeed is like the development of 
organic bodies, modification and variation an 
event of growth and a new evolution, and 
therefore its career may be illustrated by a 
single function, as, for instance, the eye, the 
gem-like organ of visuality of the hydro- 
zoa a starting-point, so to speak, for the 
evolution of the complete visual organ of 
man ; and thus also the experimental stage 
of the human spirit in art and invention may 
be likened to the primal stage of animate 
life when crude organisms were mere sugges- 
tions of later and more complete structures. 

And this likeness is not m parallel devel- 
opment alone, but also in a persistent aim to 
combine beauty with utility, and which is 
equally apparent in the course of the evolu- 
tion of form among organic bodies as in 
development of delineation in art. Hence, 
since nature and human nature both aspire 
to express the beautiful, and ugliness is 
repulsive to each, it happens that the latter 
is shoved to one side, and the former empha- 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 67 

sized in the course of variation and modifica- 
tion ; and so universally does this transpire, 
indeed, that this custom appears in the con- 
duct of life, — for when man or animal 
through accident or enmity is robbed of 
attractiveness of appearance each betrays a 
certain shamefacedness before his fellows, 
while on the other hand both emphasize their 
attractive points, this noticeable when the in- 
sect trims itself for conquest or when man 
adorns himself for like purpose. 

These habits disclosing the reign of beauty 
in domain of elemental nature are specially 
an unwitting acknowledgment of the law 
of attraction which underlies all formulation 
or productivity. Attractiveness, indeed, is 
another name for beauty, while ugliness is 
synonymous with repulsion, forces which are 
means of both variation and development, 
whence under the rein of a cosmic force 
ensues structural completeness as in the case 
of that mould of circumstance, " the image of 
God," and also the evolutions of the human 
spirit within the mould, and whose delight 
in beauty is the leash of the cosmic force, 
active in realms of spirit and matter alike, 
urging development. 



68 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

This cosmic force, under whose leash all 
development is instigated, might be said to 
drive tandem repulsion and gravitation (ug- 
liness and beauty), the two steeds hitched to 
a star of destiny — that destiny completeness 
of structure, physical and spiritual. And in 
this view, wherein the inseparable relations 
of spirit and matter are suggested, compari- 
sons drawn from nature to illustrate the traits 
of human nature appear in their true aspect, 
one force overruhno- both. It is owino' to 
this common rule that the human spmt in 
being invisible may be compared to those in- 
visible organisms in air, sea, or on land, more- 
over, being in the course of development as 
are those invisible organisms, its variations 
and modifications are learned only as in 
their case, by results. And these results are 
the theme of history, for in human civiliza- 
tion there is an evidence of the development 
as also the productivity of the human spirit, 
this development marked by cycles whose 
course is spiral, for though apparently there 
are periods of retrogression, these are but an 
eclipse in course of an upward evolution, — 
the shadow of a star, so to speak, on the way 
of progress, — humanity borne steadily for- 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 69 

ward under the leasli of cosmic force, which 
continues to impel the most lethargic step, 
for it is the 

" Divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

An Egyptian poet, whose name is lost in 
oblivion of the past, represents the human 
spirit toiling up a ladder which extends be- 
tween heaven and earth. At the summit is 
Isis and her sister Nephtys, divine mothers, 
and guardians of the new-born soul, and these 
two divinities reach forth helpful hands to 
the climbing mortal, toiling upward round 
by round. An allegory, whose key is in the 
language of correspondence used in original 
application of pictographic writing to alpha- 
betic form, this picture serves as an illustra- 
tion of the mutual attitude of beauty and 
the human soul — the spirit of beauty at 
the summit of all progress, the triumphs of 
aspiration marked by ascending steps each of 
which are seen only when shown in the con- 
tinuance of human progress, though each 
step is prophetic of the one following by 
being identified with some new concept 
through advance of knowledge that comes 
of experience in the truths of nature. 



70 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Each cycle offers a new vantage point, in- 
deed, and this is illustrated particularly in 
the history of the arts, as, for example, the 
annals of painting, the first examples drawn 
from early Christian, and so continuing 
through to the High Renaissant period, 
these annals including the names of artists 
remarkable for their influence in the evolu- 
tion of expression, each artist improving the 
method of his predecessor, as is testified in 
the works of Cimabue, Giotto, Orcagna, Fra 
Angelico, of the Gothic period (1250-1400) ; 
Masolino, Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Botti- 
celli, Ghirlandajo, Lippi (Filippino), Cosimo, 
Signorelli, of the Early Renaissance (1383-- 
1447) ; following whom appeared Leonardo, 
Fra Bartolommeo, Michael Angelo, Andrea 
del Sarto, Perugino, Raphael, Titian, and 
numerous others of the High Renaissance 
(1500-1600), these artists at the apex of 
development as also at the dechnation, for 
loosening the bonds of ecclesiasticism which 
held sway in the Gothic period, this was a 
period of license in expression, as also it was 
the humanist period, so to speak, human 
nature dominant, for in the long roll of dis- 
tinguished names few may be designated as 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 71 

having been inspired by the beauty of nat- 
ural phenomena, the interpretation of which 
is the special province of landscape art. 

It is true there are evidences of impres- 
sions gained from animate and inanimate 
forms of life at a comparatively early period 
of Italian pictorial art that disclose some con- 
sciousness of their concomitance with human 
life, — as in the case of Giotto, for exam- 
ple, who had some notion of the value of a 
sympathetic background, sometimes, indeed, 
crowding his spaces with lower animate life, 
although like his master Cimabue he was in 
a degree in bondage to the prevalent egotism 
of the time which excluded nature as of 
slight interest. A shepherd boy, and nour- 
ished among the idylls of nature which Dante 

— whilom his companion in Cimabue's studio 

— so inimitably describes, Giotto's want of 
sympathy with these themes might give rise 
to the charge that painting in comparison 
with literature is but an imitative art, objec- 
tive, and without sentiment, for when Giotto 
was inditing his slow apprehensions in color, 
Virgil and Dante's verses echoed throughout 
Italy, and to field, mountain, and stream a 
beauty was imparted that is born alone of the 



72 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

human spirit. But it is due to Giotto, as 
also to Cimabue before him, that the strait- 
jacket of Byzantine art was loosened, hence 
it may be inferred something of the spirit of 
nature — its romance and poetry — was in his 
soul. Possibly to these feelings is due his 
crowded backgrounds, the tendency to which 
suggests Dickens's crowded page, brimming, 
as one might say, with shoals of men and 
women diverse by a variant fin only. 

And Giotto's recapitulary backgrounds 
established a precedent as did Dickens's 
crowded page, for Fra Angelico seems equally 
to abhor a vacuum, his spaces filled to an 
excess, though more attractively than were 
Giotto's, there being a host of exquisite saints 
at every available point whose gentle gayety 
on occasion is expressed in a dance so unac- 
centuated that not a hem of raiment flies up, 
the movement of each nymph-like form like 
the sway of palms lulled by gentle zephyrs. 

The Gothic period in Itahan art, typified 
in Giotto's works, conveys a notion that af- 
fluence of objects gives value to the picture ; 
early paintings, indeed, were like the parlors 
of the nouveau rich, a bazaar of heterogene- 
ous furnishings. 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 73 

Nor did this method pass into disuse in the 
Early Renaissance. Benozzo Gozzoli, while 
improving the style of portraiture and figure- 
drawing of Giotto's period, added to his 
theme a medley of trees, vines, fruits, flow- 
ers, cattle, deer, hares, dogs, and birds as if, 
indeed, he were telling off like an Egyptian 
scribe the sacrificial offerings of a Pharaoh. 
And these multitudinous objects have no 
recognizable meaning so far as the subject 
of the picture is concerned, the merit lying 
only in skill of presentation, which was, it 
must be acknowledged, very considerable for 
the period ; beside, did not the continuation 
of study in lower animate life and persistence 
in giving some importance to the background 
of a picture, this being a movement in the 
line of nature studies, eventually give rise to 
landscape art? 

Furthermore, in these packed spaces of 
Giotto and Gozzoli's pictures some expres- 
sion of the beauty in the phenomena of nat- 
ural life may have been intended as in prim- 
itive verse where the simple enumeration of 
animate objects was a sufficient praise, a 
notion that our democratic poet Whitman as- 
sumes, his enumeration carried to such excess 



74 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

that tlie mouth becomes packed with words 
as with pebbles, provocative of stammering 
instead of a preventive. But if Gozzoli tes- 
tifies a kindling understanding of nature he 
is no landscapist, for his theme is human 
nature, his studies from "real life," — that 
is, human life, — and of such excellence he 
was given the title of the Florentine Holbein, 
the latter artist's skill in characterization at- 
tributed to his sympathetic portraiture of 
the human face, and deservedly, when it is 
considered how tardy the appreciation of 
the fact that in facial lineaments the soul's 
state is recorded, the skill of presentation be- 
ginning with Cimabue, who, discarding the 
staring eyes of Byzantine faces, effects a 
semi-humanistic look by means of long, nar- 
row eyes, these, however, suggestive of a 
hypnotic state, though the nearness of these 
organs of visuality is somewhat contradictory 
to entire obsession of a supernatural force, 
giving a foxy look, an expression that is 
not so marked in Giotto's faces. For Giotto 
was given to realism, this manifested by a 
combination of figures of saints and shep- 
herds together with servants and domestic 
animals most satisfactory to the amour 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 75 

2)ropre of the Roman populace, whose reli- 
gious views included the flattering hope that 
the future life offered companionships to the 
poor unattainable to the rich, an idea well 
borne out if the sturdy short bodies of Giot- 
to's saints, small heads, and massive chins, 
together with the Cimabue eye, were a trust- 
worthy characterization. Giotto possessed 
an unelastic imagination in those matters 
wherein art should lead to insight of truth — 
a saint consisted of raiment and crown, and 
this given the Imeaments seem to have 
obeyed an impulse to caricature, the sinister 
eyes approaching the line of the nose sug- 
gesting an evil temper, an expression the 
more apparent when contrasted with Fra 
Angelico's work, of whom it has been stated 
that an attempt at representation of evil 
ended in a comical failure, — so showing that 
what is in the soul comes forth upon the 
artist's canvas, he being helpless in the hand 
of the law which holds matter obedient 
to spirit. Fra Angelico was successor to 
Orcagna, whose pictures are full of tender- 
ness of feeling even to timidity, his reverence 
impeding force of expression as no wise hap- 
pened in Giotto's works. And his reverence 



76 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

prepares us to anticipate a new development 
in Avbieh sterile realism at some period must 
be subordinated to idealism. 

Reverence does not storm tbe citadel of 
the hosts of divine beauty, — it awaits their 
coming in an attitude of aspiration as a Fra 
Angelico kneebng in his cell. Orcagna per- 
ceived the impress of a mysterious entity in 
man which, within the physical envelope, gov- 
erns its shape as the hand the glove, and his 
thoughts determined by love of sweetness 
and Hght, the uncanny trick of the eyes 
represented by his predecessor is impossible 
to his faces, — and together with Fra Angel- 
ico the artist seems to be inspired as by a 
sphere of human faces, as was Raphael, these 
like the petals of Dante's rose radiating from 
the holy centre of divinity an inspiration 
like that which fires the imagination of the 
poet, hence those delicate shapes in soft, 
harmonious color in the Santa Maria No- 
vella (Florence) that seem ready to elude 
the public gaze, evanescent gleams of the 
land of dreams. An effect observed when 
compared with the works of Correggio, 
whose pictures have a physical charm, — re- 
presenting motion with tranquillity, a grace 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 77 

that is approachable, the flesh shadows 
transparent, a revelation of rose-tints, — - they 
are a typical presentation of an organism in 
perfect accord with nature, content with 
the simple delight and joy of existence ; an 
Eve, elemental and pure ! 

Orcagna prophesied a Botticelli, the mas- 
ter genius in the dreamland of saints. Bot- 
ticelli's fio-ures have that curious effect of 

o 

movement without rash disturbance of dra- 
peries that is presented in Fra Angehco's 
pictures. His, however, was a warmer na- 
ture. A certain intuition of the fact that 
spirit compels form and that substance is 
its place of nativity is represented by his 
interpretations. He has substituted for the 
ascetic mouth characteristic of Cimabue and 
Giotto's faces, full emotional lips, — in mod- 
ern art a trait in Burne-Jones's ideals, and 
exaggerated in Rossetti's, the lips a Httle 
too unctuous for right delicacy of emotion, — 
an effect nowise apparent in the Botticelli, 
— the one, in fact, a dream of fair women, 
the other a vision of sweet saints. 

Demand for more space followed the ac- 
quired skill in expression of emotion through 
the lineaments of the face, and hence it hap- 



78 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

pened that the crowded background, filled 
with animate and inanimate objects drawn 
from nature was discarded, — a result which 
would have well-nigh extinguished the incip- 
ient landscape art had it not happened that 
mythological subjects, treated at the same 
period, demanded the open air and a view 
of nature of which these subjects were an 
impersonation. Among these pictures those 
of Piero Cosimo are the more marked for a 
growing interest in landscape studies. And 
Cosimo may be said, mdeed, to be usher to 
Titian, the one landscapist of the Early Re- 
naissance, whose intuitions so far exceeded 
his compeers in this direction that he won 
the name of the founder of landscape art, 
sweeping away all prior claim by pictures of 
natural scenery divested of interest gained 
by the introduction of the human figure. 

Titian's boyhood was spent in the country 
as was Giotto's, but much progress had been 
made between the two periods with which 
these two artists were identified (1276-1386, 
1477-1576), for Titian was no background 
recapitulist, but a nature lover. His bio- 
graphy relates how that, notwithstanding he 
had made his home in the midst of all the 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 79 

attractiveness natural and artificial of Venice, 
he made frequent journeys to Cadore, place 
of his birth, the treasured result of which is 
those sketches and paintings of groups of 
mountains justly held as witness to a rare 
genius, for it is a representative nature 
which is quick with impression in youth, in- 
dependent of guide or fostering hand. And 
yet more unusual if those impressions are 
retained to such purpose. 

But it is not in the sketches of mountain 
and cloud that Titian gives an evidence of 
his tractability to the phenomena of nature, 
but in a bold, unhesitating handling of his 
themes, detail wisely subordinated to general 
effect. Here is a reminiscence of the grand 
strength of the mountains, their unhalting 
lines amid the roll and swirl of clouds, — and 
moreover it may be said that Titian's individ- 
uality lies in an unhesitating sweep of line 
rather than in the splendor of his color, for 
his fellow pupil in Bellini's studio, Gior- 
gione, so manifestly rivals him in luminosity 
of tint it might well be said that " Titian's 
color looks as if lighted from without, Gior- 
gione's as if lighted from within." 

And aptness in use of color as exhibited in 



80 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Titian's pictures represents an imagination 
less exalted than inebriated, led by the 
physical aspect of natural beauty. 

Titian doubtless found it necessary to 
visit those Friulian Alps, scene of his boyish 
visions, to steady him after his intoxication 
in Venetian life and immediate influence of 
his fellow-student, Giorgione, that gorgeous 
orchid of the Adriatic. 

The tendency of the Venetian school was 
a sumptuous sensuousness which, robbing art 
of its delicacy of sentiment, imbued it with 
a dangerous attraction. It is here appear 
those Venuses which would be better omitted 
from public galleries, fleshly, rose-like, but 
without the modesty of the rose. Marvels 
of execution, these pictures are an epitome of 
that divergence perceived in the evolution 
of Italian art which suggests the ripening of 
autumnal f oHage, — gorgeous, but destined 
to decay, — the ideal in art threatened by 
an eclipse through lack of refinement in the 
artist. 

It is noteworthy that Venice, itself so pic- 
turesque and full of color, was never an invit- 
ing theme to the Venetian artists, the modern 
artist alone comprehending its rare enchant- 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 81 

ment, as it was left to Ruskin to discover the 
remarkable suggestiveness of the " Stones of 
Venice." 

But how mention Ruskin unless also 
Turner, and, moreover, when speaking of 
Venice ? It is due, certainly, to this English 
artist to note how quick his sensibilities to the 
beauty of the Queen of the Adriatic and how 
lavish the expression of surprised delight. 
The different attitudes of Titian, founder of 
landscape art, and Turner its exponent, 
disclose the great advance made in compre- 
hensiveness of the possibilities of art as a 
means of expression from the period when 
Titian essayed to give an illustration of the 
influence of mountain scenery, and that when 
Turner drew attention to the phenomena of 
liofht and shade and their effect in nature. 

In the two artists there had been kindled 
a similar love for nature, but the spirit of the 
one was uninformed, his impression unideal, 
his skill restricted, while that of the other, 
expanding under the stimulus of modern 
catholicity of sentiment, asserted the primacy 
of natural phenomena in moulding human 
nature, and bringing it into the temple of 
the beautiful, true, and good. And Titian's 



82 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

limitations were the ear-marks of his time, par- 
taking of the sentiment of the period when 
impersonation was demanded in representa- 
tion of all objects, mountain, sea, or city, 
an heraldic device meaning; more than that 
which could be gathered from a luminous 
pageant, if as in the case of Venice, of mar- 
ble walls, towers, and minarets transfigured 
in the light of the sun, this device figuring a 
guardian spirit, the lares of human domain 
in whose protection there was security, — a 
protection believed to be particularly needed, 
for was not this city in the midst of the un- 
stable sea ? — surrounded by flowing waves 
if opposing a natural moat against besieging 
enemy, did it not mvite the dangers lurking 
beneath their crest? The sea as viewed in 
Titian's time indeed offered little inspiration 
to the artist, for tradition held up a gobelin- 
like curtain between the vision of the human 
spirit and its majestic beauty, this curtain 
tapestried over by Hellenic myth and Ital- 
ian story, tales of Argonautic adventures and 
of the exploits of the heroic ^neas, so giving 
rise to pictures of Circean dangers in the far 
horizon. And thus associated, the sea in the 
fancy of the timid landsmen was like an abyss 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 83 

— a cleft in the earth filled in by a treacher- 
ous element whose inhabitants were a hostile 
crew, their displeasure excited. Here was 
Neptune together with Amphitrite and her 
Triton brood, and from these regions issued 
fell destroyers as recorded in the Laocoon. 
An idea of the sea which is tersely expressed 
by the red man who, walking on the shore 
of the broad Michigan, with a white man, a 
doubtful friend, exclaimed : " There dwells 
a Spirit ; it springs out upon the man who 
speaks false ! " This concept a witness to an 
intuition of the existence of the true in na- 
ture, demanding the good in human nature, 
betrays an unawakened sensibility to the 
beautiful, and through these hmitations it 
came to pass that their mysteries, withheld 
from the understanding of men, — artistic 
expression slow to interpret as also science to 
explore, — the Great Waters were divinized, 
impersonated, but not beloved. 

Was it not in remembrance of the sea's 
mystery that Leonardo da Vinci pictured 
upon its shores, whereto flow the lingering 
streams beyond, that figure which had so 
long filled his imagination, eluding its grasp 
when pencil in hand he sought to delineate 



84 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

it, and which when at last Mona Lisa looked 
forth from the canvas has ever j)erplexed the 
world ? Did he not remember Aphrodite, 
who sprang from its foam, and Circe, the 
terror of the Argonauts, twain goddesses 
winsome and dangerous both ? 

" Mother, is this the darkness of the end, 
The shadow of death, and is that outer sea 
Infinite, imminent eternity ? " 

questions the poet,^ the enigmatic image the 
theme of his matchless verse. But gazing out- 
ward this woman surely perceives neither death 
nor eternity in the land-encompassing sea, 
for, her hands placidly folded, as woman has 
waited in the doorway of her tent upon the 
Sahara, or in the cabin by the devouring 
waves on the bleak coast, she waits, helplessly, 
resignation her ministrant angel in the slowly 
passing hours. And sometime a child has 
stood leaning at her knee, looking wistfully 
up into the grave face with its maternal 
brow, firm and benignant, the child recogni- 
zant of some default, whence the impassive 
repose and unexpectant stillness. But the 
child belonged to a dead past. Endowed 
with the humanized subtilty of plants and 

' Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 85 

the wisdom of birds, if maternal instincts 
blossomed in this woman's heart they have 
sown their seed and in turn are blossomino" 
far a-field and well away from the shore 
where sits this at one time mother, for it is 
not the present but the past, labor and strife 
ended, that this impersonation of an inspired 
dream suggests ; and subtile as a serpent, as 
swift in retreat as in attack, her mien brings 
up haunting reminiscences of the story of 
womanhood, for if the Tartar Mother of the 
plain Mona Lisa also might be a Roman 
Vesta, or indeed that Eve of the Garden, 
herself its ripe fruit, the unheroic Adam's 
temptatioUj suffering in that which has taken 
the hope out of life,, her ideal exists no longer. 

As a roseate sea-anemone, flung up on the 
rock, this woman's sensitiveness vibrates no 
more to the magnetic touch of the swaying 
waves of life ; indifferent, experienced, help- 
less, disarmed, she smiles without derision, 
her native magnanimity regnant, as in noble 
natures when personal happiness is at end. 

Leonardo's choice of environment, as a 
setting to this figure, product of liis many 
years' meditation, is an evidence of as careful 
consideration as the figure itself, while it 



86 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

shows this artist's comprehension of that 
secret correspondency between nature and 
human nature which is yet to be fuller 
understood and made the basis of interpreta- 
tion in Western art. 

That it had been the basis to imagery in 
literature long time prior to Leonardo or to 
Titian, the first to record natural beauty 
by itself, it is unnecessary to state. Hel- 
lenic lyrists, Roman poets, Hebraic bards, 
as also Egyptian, rehearse the beauty of nat- 
ural phenomena, the latter's text a complete 
system of correspondence between nature and 
human nature, an incipient allegory illustrat- 
ing their interdependence. And it is " the 
sweet-scented fruit time " that was sung by 
Greek and Latin poets more frequently than 
spring, the garden the scene of festivals and 
the inspirer of song. It is perhaps Theocri- 
tus's memorable orchard feast which inspired 
the later modern painter, his eidullia a one- 
act scene as necessary to a landscape picture, 
for not alone were Keats, Wordsworth, and 
Tennyson his followers in praise of nature, 
but those poets of the brush of the eighteenth 
century. Turner and Corot, these artists giv- 
ing evidence of a love for open air, realizing 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 87 

the charm of nature, a sensibility to which 
was for so long a period unevinced in Italian 
art, even a sympathetic background as tardy 
in painting as scenic attraction in Greek, 
or long after in Shakespearian plays, all 
environment a meretricious embelHshment. 
This unconscious insensibility when art was 
rapidly gaining place as the exponent of 
the ideal among the Latins is particularly 
emphasized in the story of Adam and Eve, 
its scene a garden, and at " sweet-scented 
fruit time," as was the idyll of Theocritus, 
the Hebraic author disclosing such poetic 
instincts in place and time as to fire the 
imagination of those poets of the pen, Dante 
and Milton, as also to find echo in the refined 
nature of Fra Angelico, and those deHcate- 
minded artists, his followers in simplicity of 
religious fervor ; these artists, however, un- 
able to interpret themes requiring both pro- 
found sentiment and balance of judgment as 
the subject here considered. 

The description of the scene is familiar to 
all, and it is but necessary to recall the afflu- 
ence of natural beauty suggested in the brief 
mention of the rivers whose ample flow sur- 
rounded the mythic garden on its four sides, 



88 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

that no part should go unwatered ; that here 
also are sinless anmials, fruit trees, and a vege- 
tation suited to the needs of these animals 
(carnivora having no place in Paradise), to 
picture the surroundings of the hero and 
heroine, those two human beings, offspring 
of divinity who enacted a tragedy around 
which has gathered the myriad fancies of 
ancient and modern bards, but which has 
proved a pitfall in Christian art, and this 
because of the limitations of the theme as 
also limitation of skill. 

At the period when figures of Adam and 
Eve were attempted skill in portraiture was 
of the most tentative kind, Gothic and even 
Early Renaissant art seldom portraying what 
may be strictly called a human face, — the un- 
conscious mingling of animal and human lin- 
eaments, such as appear in heads of Zeus in 
the archaic period of Greek art, still govern- 
ing the attempt, — art thus betraying that if 
man is the animal humanized, he was by no 
means the human animal divinized, for it 
was real life that the artist designed to depict, 
and this life inspired the haK-human image. 
Exceptions there were when a human face 
looked forth from its crowded or open-air 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 89 

environment that disclosed a vague concep- 
tion of the quality of a human spirit whose 
final regnancy over the phenomena of form 
is obtained by that seK-improvement which 
has gained an access of strength through the 
cumulative power of variation and modifi- 
cation in lower physical life, — but these 
exceptions proved the rule. 

But without genius to apprehend the mea- 
sure of meaning possible in the human face, 
were there not types of faces — like those 
presented in Greek sculptures — with wide 
frank eyes candidly observant and betoken- 
ing the unreminiscence of the child, together 
with an incapacity to resist temptation, that 
mi2:ht have been models to the artist who 
aspired to present the actors in this primeval 
drama? Suppose that he despaired of re- 
presenting Adam and Eve when their faces 
wore traces of their fall, the artist should 
take for a model the child's face, would not 
that be a sufficient exponent ? 

But this was done, is answered, and the 
result is a censure on the development of 
man or his primeval condition, less flattering 
than the proposition attributed to Darwin, 
for the effect of the child face on the full- 



90 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

grown adult is contradictory to experience, 
and therefore a travesty little becoming the 
theme. Indeed, these creations, inventions 
without ideaHzation, are absurd enough to 
provoke the mirth of the incomparable pair 
themselves, and they were better banished — 
hidden from sight. And true of the Adams 
and Eves of Italian art, true in respect to the 
nude in all countries where art is defaced by 
disrobed humanity, the inane figures, our first 
parents, being leaders to a route of inanities 
as droll in civilization where clothino; is a 
sign of sanity as a burlesque of Aristophanes. 

In the modern nude through the anachro- 
nism of child face and adult body an illustra- 
tion is given of the changed conditions 
resulting from intellectualization and conse- 
quent delicacy of perception of means 
whereby the ideal may be actualized. It 
attests that disrobement is contrary to the 
advancement of mentality, clothing being as 
much the sio^n of the evolution of the human 
species from a lower to a higher stage as the 
feathers of birds are an evidence of an evolu- 
tion from the un winged state acquired in the 
bird species. 

But how improve on methods tliat gave to 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 91 

the world those matchless white marbles of 
Hellas ? 

Each civilization must bear witness to it- 
self, it is answered. In the period when 
Greek art was exponent of the ideal the hu- 
man form was the expression of human 
nature, but in the new era the human face 
is an exponent of the human spirit in the act 
of evolving out of the bondage of the phy- 
sical body. And this being so, since it is 
a canon of art that the accessory should be 
subordinate to the motive, the Hellenic nude 
is an impossible model to modern expression 
in art ; for the face in the nude loses empha- 
sis, and in consequence the artist is in the 
plight of the instrumentahst who in render- 
ing a musical composition loses his theme 
through false accent. And the persistence 
with which the nude holds its place up to 
the present time as an expression of fine art 
is even more amazing than the persistence in 
those inaccurate presentations of music that 
drive distraction up through the aural ave- 
nues of sound into the soul, and for which 
there are but the two remedies, one to seek 
another planet or banish these would-be ar- 
tists to the schoolroom. 



92 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

It is in the schoolroom effiofies are made 
indeed, and here is place for the nude, which 
should be for the pupil in art what the ca- 
daver is to the student in medicine. Does 
the pupil wish to display technique, let him 
display it where the ideal is not aimed at 
but accuracy of imitation — mere copy ! the 
delineation of a figure is at the basis and be- 
ginning of art, its meaning and the idea con- 
veyed is its worth to the world, and this is 
equally true in matters appertaining to color. 

It can be surmised that before the intro- 
duction of landscape art flesh-coloring was 
a means of display of skill as alluring as 
figure drawing, hence those examples among 
artists who were constantly engaged in in- 
venting new colors and new modes of appli- 
cation, these to preserve the much coveted 
luminosity and brilliancy characterizing, for 
instance, both Giorgione and Titian's paint- 
ing, the pupil through greater scope of 
imagination rivaUng the master in composi- 
tion, but always betraying a similar sense of 
color. Two influences indeed, as has been 
said, are evident in Titian's works : one, of 
the Friulian Alps, Nature his Alma Mater, 
and where his boyhood imagination was 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 93 

engrafted with the majesty of line, as pre- 
sented by mountainous regions ; and the 
other when in his maturity he perceived the 
enchantment of color, as used by Giorgione. 
Hence, as said, Titian's breadth of expression, 
for he was both remarkable for delineation 
and color, a certain emphasis of stroke charac- 
terizing his pictures, as in Tribute Money, his 
Christ having a high-minded dignity which 
does not appear in the figures of the Christ 
prior to Titian's time, while the coloring is 
true and luminous as well. 

This boldness of execution, result of early 
influences, is noticeable by comparison with 
the works of Raphael, this paragon of effi- 
ciency being always accurate and at the same 
time seldom forgetfully energetic, in what 
he reveals, — perhaps so engrossed in manip- 
ulation and treatment the force of his spirit 
is near being sapped. 

Comparing Raphael with a higher au- 
thority than Titian, Michael Angelo, it is 
observed that while the latter presents an 
event, it is suggested that it is transpiring 
and unfinished, the " passing event " not 
the past, a virtue less applicable to many of 
Raphael's representations owing to the fact 



94 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of finish and detail. This limitation is yet 
more evident in comparing Raphael's work 
with Greek sculptures, for these, even with- 
out Michael Angelo's trick of absolutely 
unfinished work, suggest succession of move- 
ment, and it appears almost a deception of 
the eye that the figure is motionless. 

Raphael, a master of line, color, and re- 
fined sentiment, also fails of imparting the 
impression of being borne completely out of 
self-consciousness, — hence the growling dis- 
dain of the passionate Michael Angelo, who 
no doubt in his soul called Raphael ^«icA:y, 
being suspicious that all this perfection of 
the paragon artist of the Madonna was on 
the verge of the decline of art, — that such 
work, indeed, belonged to genre art, and 
would end in being imitated by artisans, 
craftsmen, and china painters. 

And in truth this master of technique was 
on the verge of the decline of art, Paul Vero- 
nese many years after precipitating the move- 
ment. Veronese was a calculator of effects 
to such nicety that conventional Rome was 
veritably visualized before its eyes, the sump- 
tuous clothes-respecting ^osez^rs in the palace 
or on the piazza presented with a flourish of 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 95 

manner suggesting a Bulwer in literature, 
" the glass and fashion " of the time mirrored 
•with inimitable grace. Paul Veronese's 
Marriage in Cana is indeed a picture of 
Roman life, and moreover of Italian art as 
it passed into the school of literalists reach- 
ing its decadence in 1600, two years after 
the death of Veronese, eighty years after 
Raphael. Decadence is sure to evolve if 
slowly when literalness enters the realm of 
art or self-conscious power, — and its precip- 
itation, moreover, may be anticipated when 
ideals are made subservient: a Christ and 
a Madonna accessory to a Roman fete ! 

It is significant that color was subordi- 
nated to form as skill was acquired by the 
Greek sculptors, and it appears that when 
tints were applied they were demanded for 
harmony of effect, as in the case of the Par- 
thenon frieze, — which in part was intended 
to be a realistic representation of the annual 
procession from the market-place to the 
Acropolis on the occasion of Athena's chief 
festival, and where varied draperies would, if 
colored, add greatly to the splendor of the 
illustration and also be in harmony with the 
statue of Athena, whose weight of golden 



96 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

adornment had the effect of a glittering bea- 
con to the mariner far out to sea, the height 
of the statue (thirty-eight feet) suggesting a 
tower of defense. 

EmbeUishment by means of color, the 
polychromy practiced in Egypt, was adopted 
unsparingly in Greece when brilliancy of 
effect was desirable. Borrowing and per- 
fecting the Trabeate style of architecture 
from Egypt, the color effects of the temples 
of the Egyptian were also imitated without 
doubt ; the fastidious Greek, however, prac- 
ticed some reserve in color in the consecrated 
image, and it does not appear that tinting the 
flesh became habitual as in Egyptian art. 
And it may be inferred that as the sculptures 
became more and more lifelike and less 
hierarchal than were the Egyptian images, 
it was perceived that the appliance of color 
accentuates the sensuous in art, often bearing 
away the judgment in an enthusiasm, like 
that excited by Strauss music, to use a modern 
illustration ; and moreover it is inconceivable 
that an intelhgent sense of the beautiful, 
which is a trait of the Greek mind, would 
permit the application of paint upon the 
luminous Pentelic marble, for instance, used 
by Praxiteles for the figure of Hermes. 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 97 

But it must be remembered that the 
Hermes does not belong to the period when 
art was consecrated alone to sacred purposes, 
while the application of color to statues 
was rather common to that epoch ; color in- 
deed assumed an equal place with form when 
the Parthenon was built, the Greeks being 
heirs to a traditional symbolism in color. 
But they did not, hke the Hebrew idealist, 
however, make it a vehicle of expression in 
lieu of form, so actualizing thought through 
tint, a practice that is origin of color sym- 
bolism used by the old masters of painting in 
Italy, when white was emblem of purity and 
innocence ; red, of love, the creative power ; 
blue, truth and constancy ; yellow, goodness, 
faith, and fruitf ulness ; green, hope in im- 
mortality, victory ; violet, love and truth, 
passion and suffering. And Greek reserve 
in tinting the flesh of the nude statue is an 
illustration of the delicate taste that was so 
emphasized a trait of Greek genius, a refine- 
ment that did not follow the current of influ- 
ence which spread over Italy after the fall of 
the empire, the nude, on the contrary, being 
painted as realistic as the skill of the artist 
permitted. And thus it happens that in the 



98 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

paintings of the Early Renaissance among 
saintly characters is introduced a nude fig- 
ure with heedful realism in color and form, 
— a barbarism only possible to an inartistic 
temperament. For the nude images of the 
Greeks are idealized, the fine keen intellec- 
tualism of the Grecian temperament perme- 
ant in the work, and therefore something of 
the grandeur of the evolution of the human 
form, its erectness and suppleness, power and 
mentality, is felt, those traits perceived as is 
perceived the nobility of a tree, in stem, 
branches, boughs, and foliage. 

But what is the significance of the nude 
in ItaHan painting ? All that it contains of 
message to the human spirit is a knowledge 
of the extremes to which love of admiration 
will carry a painter. Study of real life surely 
began badly in Italy ; discarding the Byzan- 
tine facial atrocities and wooden images, a 
greater error took their place, and a show of 
knowledge was deemed of more importance 
than sentiment. Hence the blunder of Ma- 
saccio, whose desire to assure the world that 
he knew the structure of the human form 
caused him to introduce a primeval man 
among scriptural characters, an anachronism 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 99 

■which extreme insensibility to harmony o£ 
sentiment would dictate. And this blun- 
der was committed when it was beginning 
to appear that Greek art had said the last 
word on the human form, and now was the 
artist's opportunity to add that which was 
of greater value, to become an exponent of 
the human spirit by representing its likeness 
registered in the human face, on this be- 
ing recorded individuality, an individuality 
wrought out by human experience. But the 
artists of Masaccio's period were not seers, 
and they did not perceive that Greek art had 
finished its message and, departing, closed the 
door, nor that they were false to their era, 
turning back the wheels of progress, and re- 
peating in blindness what was done with true 
feeling in sculpture ages before. Masaccio's 
work, indeed, hardly rivals that of the ^gi- 
netan marbles, and done without archaic 
naivete, pretending to be studies from real 
life they were unreal, by reason of falsity to 
actual life. 

The bad taste of Masaccio is not so promi- 
nent as that shown in Luca Signorelli's naked 
human figures, these strong, muscular, and 
violent in action, and in which there is no 

L.ofC. 



100 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

heed to facial expression, physical life, physi- 
cal prowess, without a hint of the soul ani- 
mating the body, man, hke the horses of 
Micon, typical of an animated physical force. 
An exhibition of technical skill, the works of 
Signorelli, compared with those of Fra An- 
gelico for instance, if showing an evolution 
in skill, also betray a degeneracy of senti- 
ment, a too frequent accompaniment of a 
study of the nude, as is later shown by 
Michael Angelo, whose evident passion for 
representation of the nude human figure led 
to portraiture of few attractive faces. But 
Michael Angelo is saved from the loud un- 
reserve of the colorist, a sober harmony of 
tone being maintained that acts upon the im- 
agination as effectually as the exclusion of 
color in the marble image. Beside, the lat- 
ter artist did not, in display of technique, for- 
get his theme, nor do his nude figures thrust 
themselves forward as the puppet of the 
artist's vanity. Some sentiment higher than 
art for art's sake is unfolded in Michael An- 
gelo's work indeed, sentiments that are less 
induced by the senses than by reason ; with 
him form, attitude, line, and poise characteris- 
tic, as in Greek art, supremacy in delineation 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 101 

gaining by exclusion of brilliancy of color, a 
method of expression that is in accordance 
with the fact that structure is fundamental 
to a visualization of the ideal, this disclosing, 
as is impossible through color, the purpose 
and quality of the energy embodied, so pre- 
senting the sum of experiences and conse- 
quent evolutions. 

Restraint in use of color, practiced by 
Michael Angelo in representing the human 
form, stands for restraint of passion, as may 
be perceived by its analysis. 

Color in its dependency on circumstance 
possesses a feminine quality appealing to 
the heart, demanding less of the intellect. 
Martial men delight in color, as in beautiful 
women ; brilliant color besieges the eye as 
the trumpet the ear ; if war is proclaimed, 
city and citizen flame forth in color ; martial 
and aggressive, or mellow and Imninous, it 
is a sign of emotion either enthusiastic or 
subdued and pensive ; and so, associated with 
the heart rather than with the intellect, its 
place in primitive language of correspond- 
ence is made intelligible ; for how describe 
the deified forces of nature except through 
description of their raiment ? If when sun- 



102 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

beam weds the mellow earth, upspring troops 
of frasfile elfs, their censers adorned with 
colors, red, blue, purple, and yellow, what 
more certain sign of the temper of the sum- 
mer god ! 

Most fitting the hilarity of hues chosen by 
Fra Angelico for his saints in paradise, nor 
did he select the diverse tints without due 
regard to sacerdotal meaning; as, indeed, 
may be said in all early Gothic art, Byzan- 
tine and Arabic, discrimination in applica- 
tion of hues retained, which was itself an 
inheritance from the far East. 

And here it is of interest to note that 
in Egyptian art, color and form are not di- 
vorced, and images of the gods are often dis- 
criminated by the color that is descriptive of 
their realm, if it be water, earth, or sky. But 
this application of color determined the sen- 
timent, the god thus shown to be an ideal 
of the verdant earth, the blue sky, the pale 
waters. Moreover, primeval man, by im- 
prints of color upon the flesh itself, identified 
himself with the god of his personal worship, 
so declaring his allegiance ; and the colors so 
used were sacred if also applied to decorative 
purposes, — a voluntary emblem of service. 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 103 

It is of striking contrast to the custom of 
branding animals, on whose flesh is set a sig- 
net of service that, in being involuntary, is 
slavery. 

Consecration of color, traced back to primi- 
tive usages, rebukes its intemperate applica- 
tion in the Renaissant period if subjects of 
sacred import were the artist's theme, as in 
the myth of Adam and Eve. And it is ob- 
servable that in pictures on which the seal of 
a more general approbation has been set, — 
as, for instance, Sodoma's Adam and Eve, — 
the tint is more or less subdued ; and imitat- 
ing the lofty sentiment of Leonardo, his mas- 
ter, Sodoma acquired a certain dignity of 
expression which is not found in such figures 
in the nude of his period. 

But however satisfactory the delineation, 
the anachronism of woven linen, together 
with the modernity of the faces, is sufficient 
to condemn the picture as an expression of 
the idea set forth by the Hebrew bard in the 
story of the fall of man. 

The annals of the world show that each 
civilization demands a witness in art of itself. 
Egypt, Greece, China, Japan, Mexico, and 
Peru possess severally a representative art. 



104 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Such also is the demand of modern civiliza- 
tion. 

The artists in Italy, if discerning the 
demand, often failed to meet it, their diffi- 
culty lying in endeavoring to modernize 
scriptural events, to plant oriental flora in 
Roman soil. This effort is exemplified in 
Veronese's Marriage in Cana, where the ar- 
tist has introduced the portraits of the distin- 
guished citizens of Rome together with his 
fellow - artists, and all arrayed in gorgeous 
costumes, while Christ and his mother are 
in the background, so plainly disclosing the 
artist's subordination of his theme to that 
which was of present importance in his small 
world. Imminghng present history with the 
past, many artists gave to the simple story 
of Palestine the pomp and circumstance of a 
Roman fete in which gorgeousness of color 
served for lack of truth, a gloss as pernicious 
when laid on sacred themes as the subterfuge 
of an unskilled draughtsman through use of 
color, the principle being the same. 

It is to these falsities, among many others 
of the High Renaissance period, that may be 
traced the decadence of art in Italy. For at 
this period the ideal was gradually subordi- 



ART; OLD USAGES AND NEW DEMANDS 105 

nated to realism, the human figure a means 
of display of technique, sacred myths of the 
Bible opportunity for presentation of Roman 
affluence or churchly supremacy. Art had 
neither the characteristic of pagan sincerity 
nor Christian piety. The candor of innocence 
debased, the artist's brush became the instru- 
ment of degenerate sentiment, a condition 
that is typified in literature in the contrast 
between a Boccaccio garden scene and that 
of the Hebraic bard. 

Degenerate sentiment in art is like in pro- 
cess to what is termed a dry rot in vegetal 
life, for if no longer an exponent of the 
true, which, visualized in natiu-al phenomena, 
is also beauty, art decays, serving at length 
for fertilization of a new plant, the genius of 
the period determining the abundance of its 
bloom, as also the character of its species. 

Furthermore, degenerate sentiment in art 
is but another expression for a general lapse 
of integrity of spirit, and this integrity, de- 
pending upon moral force, is ever at inverse 
ratio to self-consciousness; a phenomenon 
that would suggest that spontaneity, however 
inadequate the skill, is the first avenue of 
approach to truth, an idea that the decline 
of Itahan art seems to indorse. For as dis- 



106 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

play of technique took the place of delight 
in the expression of the beautiful, art 
degenerated. 

Does not art for artist's sake hide behind 
'' Veronese fecit ? " Is not self-consciousness 
the blemish of that decadent spirit which fell 
like a cloud upon Guido Reni after his mas- 
terpiece, the Aurora ? 

Perhaps it were wiser that an artist should 
exist for the world only in his works ; be 
known there and beloved as the Great Artist 
is known and beloved in his works. 

Does the oriole label its nest, the plant its 
rose ? 

The more deft and winsome a thing, the 
more universal and less personal its title, 
being of God. And the more secret and 
unobserved the labor, the more sacred. It 
is war, rapine, and sacrilege that is loud, 
aiming at display. 

In brief, consecration, self-forgetfulness, 
an unvociferant dedication to the true, beau- 
tiful, and good, wins through all eclipse, and 
rises at each round nearer the divine out- 
stretched hands. 

And the annals of consecration are replete 
with signs of approach at all epochs, in ani- 
mate and inanimate life, as among men. 



IV 

NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT MESSAGE OF ART 

The evolution of art furnishing a lar- 
gesse of sentiment, now exalted and now com- 
monplace, the artist at one time an idealist 
startling the world with his inspiration, at 
another time an imitator displaying mechan- 
ical skill, at last came to that period when 
sentiment failed, a blight falling on all ex- 
pression except that of a mediocre character. 
This period, termed the decadent era of Ital- 
ian art, is marked, however, by the appear- 
ance of a veritable landscape artist, Salvator 
Rosa being born in sixteen hundred (1615- 
1673). Distinguished, as was Titian, as a 
portrait painter, Salvator Rosa appears to 
have a keen perception of the elemental in 
human nature, as also a strong sympathy with 
nature. Indeed, his insight assumes the char- 
acter of an interpretation of man through 
nature — the face of nature the face of hu- 
man nature, its phases like the phases of emo- 
tion in the human spirit. 



108 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

The Decadents were called Tenebrosi, or 
Darklings. They also were called Naturalists; 
and such was Salvator Kosa, in the sense 
that he studied, as had his predecessors of 
the Early Renaissance, real life ; that is, 
realizing on his canvases visuaHzed form, 
whether of animate or inanimate life, filling 
his canvas with the thrilling world of natural 
phenomena, representing impenetrable forests, 
lofty solitudes, storm-lashed coasts, and inac- 
cessible heights. He also presented scenes 
that were not only the dens of wild beasts, but 
also of men, elemental in their disposition, 
wanderers from the restraints of civilization, 
and well known to the artist, as may be justly 
inferred by those marvelous portraits, heads 
of brigands in the Academy of St. Luke, 
Rome. And it is through these portraits is 
given a glimpse of the life of Salvator Rosa, 
which doubtless was passed in part in the 
precincts of these wolf-hounds of the Alps, 
his own temperament, it is not improbable, 
making this association not impossible. For 
Salvator Rosa, if a prophetic genius, had the 
hmitations of his epoch, which was marked 
by passionate expression, Caravaggio, and 
Ribera, his early master, illuminating the 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 109 

eclipse of art with lurid scenes conjured up 
by their brutal imagination, so sending forth 
from their dens in Naples a volcanic breath, 
full of anathema upon the gentler forms of 
art as created by Domenichino or Guido 
Reni, for instance ; the latter painter making 
escape from persecution by a precipitate re- 
treat, having entered the forbidden precincts 
of these artists,^ while the former, it is 
claimed, was made victim, poisoned at their 
hands. That Salvator felt the influences 
about him, as in his youth he worked under 
the tutorage of Ribera, cannot be doubted, 
the result of which, however, was to give him 
a new insight into human nature, and that 
upon the shadowy side, — the aspect, for ex- 
ample, which was portrayed in literature by 
Sophocles' s CEdipus, and in art by the Lao- 
coon, — these works suggestive of an eclipse 
in the joyous Hellenic spirit. This view of 
human nature, expressed in Salvator Rosa's 
Heads of Brigands, is in startling contrast 
with that which is testified by the cloisteral 

^ A secret society was formed in Naples, in whicli Ri- 
bera and others were leaders, the avowed purpose to expel 
or poison any artist who entered the precincts to practice 
art. 



110 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

faces of the Early and High Renaissance, or, 
indeed, of the Gothic period of art as repre- 
sented in Fra Angelico. 

It is, however, the third period of the evo- 
lution of expression, the first being that of 
the cloisteral face, — of the heavy somnambu- 
lic eyes, their Hds drooping and lethargic, 
the soul under a spell ; the second charac- 
terized by either the wide startled eyes of 
Raphael's Madonna or the firm, matronly 
grace of Murillo's Mary, an impressive dignity 
in the calm gaze. Of this period are the pic- 
tures of Andrea del Sarto, of whom it may be 
said that to imitate Raphael he could not if 
he would and would not if he could, as may 
be attested by his impersonation of St. John, 
whose bearing is full of vital force, emi- 
nently significant of the unlikeness of An- 
drea del Sarto's genius to that of the ecclesi- 
astical painters of the High Renaissance, or, 
indeed, of either period of the evolution of 
Italian art, Gothic, Early Renaissance, and 
the final so-called High Renaissance, the era 
of a threatened dethronement of the cloisteral 
concept of the true, beautiful, and good. 
And this second representation of human na- 
ture, result of accumulated study from real 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 111 

life, beginning so far back as the time of 
Masaccio and Ghirlandajo, Michael Angelo's 
early master, is a precursor of the Brigand 
Heads of Salvator Rosa. For study in real 
life as testified by the works of Andrea del 
Sarto, and in particular those of Michael An- 
gelo, whose mighty stride in the way of open- 
air human nature, actual, living and sinning, 
is like the entrance of a Shakespeare in the 
field of Elizabethan poetry. Salvator Rosa 
represented things as he saw them. It is real 
life, and that of the times which, while rife 
with fictitious piety, was also rife with ele- 
mental human passions, — passions that the 
artist had perceived in daily intercourse with 
the Tenebrosi of Naples, not only, but in the 
mountaineers, the shepherds, and mariners, 
— passions of woe, of disaster, and envy that 
demanded the dens of wild beasts for free- 
dom of action. And hence the environment 
given these figures, and whereby, as if in mu- 
tual af&nity, nature and human nature are 
brought face to face, and together with the 
wrack of tempests, the overcreeping shadow 
(Ribera's chiaroscuro), there is the untamed 
wolf-hound, man. 

But if elemental chaos, there is sublimity ; 



112 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the demoniacal as with Ribera does not in- 
vite this new interpreter of nature and " real 
life," Salvator Rosa's distinction lying in this 
reserve, the ugly features of chaotic elements 
in man and nature being suggested while 
over and above all there is a strain of har- 
mony. So marked is this that Salvator Ro- 
sa's influence is traced in Nicholas Poussin's 
(1560-1665) landscapes, although in this 
artist's work is no hint of elemental nature, 
chaotic and tempestuous, but simply a Titian- 
esque representation of mountainous scenery 
together with masses of foliage, Roman archi- 
tecture, and sculpturesque figures — a French 
rendering of Italy's charm to an average 
visitor ! 

But to Poussin must be given the distinc- 
tion of transmitting to his native land seeds 
which bore remarkable fruit. To mention 
the name of Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) is 
to bring up scenes of natural beauty, not 
only, but to occasion a feeling of reassurance 
in the constancy with which art reillumines 
its torch after an echpse, its apparent extin- 
guishment a transitory flickering due to the 
decay of genuine uprightness of sentiments. 
To use an illustration : In ancient days. 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 113 

there was the custom of reillumining the 
fires of sacred altars on an annual fete, a 
custom common to Peru, Mexico, China, and 
to Greece ; and for this purpose a herald 
passed from place to place bearing a lighted 
torch, which, illumining the sacred fires, was 
also means of relighting the hearth-fires of 
the people under the charge of domestic 
lares. 

And thus the herald of truth in art 
came to France, bringing the sacred fire, lit 
from Salvator Rosa's genius, nor did the her- 
ald remain there, but passed the borders of 
France, and at length is discerned igniting the 
genius of a man unlettered and of the com- 
mon people, William Turner (1778-1851). 
And it is noteworthy that in this reillumina- 
tion of the sacred fire in France and Eno-- 
land, while in the former country decorative 
art was superseded by a sentiment for the 
beautiful in nature, the classic method still 
maintained its hold in the latter. 

But if the classic appeared its reign was 
tentative, soon to be overthrown by the over- 
powering force of genius, which once alit, as 
in Turner, sways all lesser flames toward it. 
The largeness of the inspirations of the 



114 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

human spirit influences the life. As a proof 
of this it is worthy of note that the EngHsh 
artist exhibited a fraternal spirit in abrupt 
contrast to the enmity that existed among 
artists in the decadent period in Italy, 
Turner candidly avowing his debt to Claude 
Lorraine, claiming that he was his model, 
and finally requesting that one picture of the 
French artist should be hung beside his own, 
and this in a gallery which was nevertheless 
dedicated to the English painter's works. 

This incident is of pecuHar import when 
considered in respect to the expression of art. 
Those brutalized souls, Ribera and Caravag- 
gio, emitted the foulness of their nature, not 
only through their pictures, but on their fel- 
low artists. But as in Claude Lorraine's pic- 
tures, and those of Turner, the ideals were 
drawn directly from nature whose dominant 
spirit is representative of the true and beau- 
tiful and good such was the sentiment exhib- 
ited in the hves of these interpreters, partic- 
ularly in that of Turner, whose large fortune 
by his will, but for a mischance, would have 
fallen to his successors in art. Thus, living 
a habitually penurious and unluxurious life, 
he sought to confer the benefits of compar- 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 115 

ative ajQluence on others. And this inte- 
rior brightness of soul is shown in Turner's 
ready following of Claude Lorraine. For 
the French artist discovered that not shadow 
but light is the message of art. His annun- 
ciation received, Turner became nearly delir- 
ious over the delight which came upon him 
in view of aerial perspectives, and which he 
carried to such success that his luminous 
canvases well-nigh demented the poetic soul 
of Ruskin. Nor was Turner a disconnected 
link in the chain of landscape evolution by 
choice of subject, for, as Titian, Salvator Rosa, 
Poussin, and Claude Lorraine, he imbibed 
his " strength from the hills," and a sur- 
passing love for the mountainous lands is 
exhibited by numerous illustrations of these 
majestic forms moulded by tempests and 
stroked by caressing winds, as also a passion 
for the long sweep of horizon lines, — his 
paintings including both phases, — in his 
rivers of England and France as in the pic- 
turesque scenery of the southern coast of 
England and Wales, these showing a delight 
in the illimitable and universal. Turner's 
largeness of grasp of the principal features 
of the region destined for his canvas, and 



116 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

his final idealization of his subject, suggest 
Wordsworth's scene painting. Indeed, it 
may be claimed that the artist is an inspirer 
of the poet, and that the latter by means of 
words expressed what the former had pre- 
sented by means of delineation and color, 
painting thus in advance. The reader, I 
hope, will pardon a quotation here, for di- 
verse leadings and followings in man's ascent 
toward the inward brightness betray the in- 
creasing hold of nature's visualized ideals, 
and which it is the province of art to illus- 
trate : — 

" Then when the peal of swelling torrents fills 
The sky-roof'd temple of the eternal hills ; 
Or when, upon the mountain's silent brow 
Reclined, he sees, above him and below, 
Bright stars of ice and azure fields of snow ; 
While needle peaks of granite shooting bare 
Tremble in ever-varying tints of air." 

Wordsworth's descriptive sketches in his 
walking tour among the Alps are an evidence 
of a spirit set abroad, first by Dante, and 
then betrayed in Titian's moimtain scenery, 
his paintings followed by those of Salvator 
Rosa and Poussin. These pictures are illus- 
trative of the influence of natui'al grandeur 
upon the artistic temperament, this being 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 117 



like that which prompted Wordsworth's 

acknowh 

tern : — 



acknowledgment in lines written near Tin- 



" The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy mood, 
Their colors and their forms, were thus to me 
An appetite ; a feeling and a love 
That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, nor any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye." 

It is in the last line is betrayed the method 
of the painter. " I have always," says this 
poet of Rydal Mount, " endeavored to look 
steadily at my subject." 

Wordsworth was imbued with the new 
forces set upon the human spirit in the eigh- 
teenth century whence was the inspiration 
of Keats and Shelley, their luminous spirits 
fused in the electric currents that flow from 
the heart of Deity immanent in nature, a bril- 
liant report of which Turner has given, his 
brush dipped in the glory of the sun, form 
transfigured in his aerial perspective. And it 
may not be forgotten that the aerial perspec- 
tive in painting, product of Claude Lorraine's 
genius, is in following, with an intelligent 
view of nature, " truths plucked as they are 



118 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

growing," earth and sky so shown to unite in 
harmony of tender gradation, all the apparent 
demarcations losing themselves in unity of 
tone ; an interpretation, in fact, in following 
with the investigations of science, the scien- 
tist and artist each in their way in the new 
era affording an insight into the harmony 
and coherency of the universe. 

Primeval man read nature as a child reads 
his spelling-book, each object, so to speak, 
spelled out, the difficulty in aptitude at ex- 
pression showing itself prominently as in the 
case with children whose faculties are a type 
of conditions that obtained among primitive 
men to a certain degree, the comparison hold- 
ing more particularly, however, where skill 
of hand is considered. 

Here it should be observed that there was 
an unchildlike apprehension among primi- 
tive artists of the comparative significance 
of objects — that, for instance, a tree might 
represent many trees, or a woodland. Fur- 
thermore, the grouping of objects declared 
a systematic acquaintance with the means of 
producing an association of ideas, whereby 
the purpose of a picture might be under- 
stood. 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 119 

I£ the primitive artist, for example, wished 
to represent a bivouac in a woodland, he pic- 
tured a tree, a tent, and a man, each with 
such skill as he possessed, and though sever- 
ally unrelated, as far as combination through 
perspective conduces to relation of parts, he 
induced recognition of his purpose, and in a 
degree his picture was a success. Intelligence 
had dictated the representation, and it ap- 
pealed to intelligence. Could this be said of 
all works of modern art ? Indeed, no. An 
apprehension of the necessity in artistic 
work that there should be a motif which 
shall appeal immediately to the intelligence is 
not universal among the devotees to fine art. 
Vagaries in color are often mistaken for pic- 
tures, conveying no idea. They are more 
childish than the work of the primitive artist, 
whose tree, tent, and man, destitute of that 
subtile unity to effect which all phenomena 
had conspired, had given an idea carrying 
out the picture's purpose. 

But though directness is characteristic of 
primitive art, and it is a special qualification 
necessary to expression, the human spirit de- 
manded unity of purpose, which finally 
trained the hand to perspective and har- 



120 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

mony of composition that, joining itself to 
prior power, enthroned art as a representa- 
tive of truth whose power is manifest both 
in nature and human nature, the recognition 
of which, together with directness and unity 
of purpose, constitutes an artist's claim to 
precedence. 

The union of these two qualifications is, 
however, very infrequent, and it is this one- 
sided development in Kuskin's example of 
complete expression (the Turner landscape) 
this infrequency is the more evident since the 
artist arrived at such success in so many 
points whereby truth is illustrated. For 
Turner, in his infatuation for aerial perspec- 
tive, represents harmony without directness, 
a defect which may be emphasized by com- 
parison of the modern landscapist, Corot; 
for this artist, while giving an impression 
of the illimitableness of light, also presents 
the limitableness and continuity of form by 
means of a characterization as indubitable as 
that of Perugino. 

To blur over the real and tangible is not 
to idealize, and there is much to say in be- 
half of this latter artist, as his followers even 
in their leaning toward ancient methods, for 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 121 

a picture among the ancients must mean 
something, and say what it meant. The ur- 
gency of ideals even at that time more or less 
helpful to this end, this urgency and trend 
of the ideals shown indeed in ancient speech, 
for the primitive orator is often sententious 
and perspicuous, his objective point clearly 
enforced. And methods are traceable in 
pictography, the earliest form of literature, 
wherein may be discovered objective images 
remarkable for their directness of illustration 
even when involved in complex matters 
which require the introduction of tune and 
state, together with place. And it is in the 
struggle with these difficulties, while firmly 
retaining the desire for singleness of expres- 
sion, — so narrating the concept that it 
reaches the understanding of men, — that 
there came into existence both the breadth 
and directness in Greek art shown at last in 
the Parthenon, in which building there is 
completeness of design, singleness of purpose, 
and exactitude of meaning, the motif plainly 
dedicatory; the ensemble of figures, com- 
pactness of cella, and encircling columns em- 
phasizing the purpose of the construction so 
completely that there was no evidence of 



122 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

equivocation, — the candor of the ancients 
shown at last with a mastery of expression 
that exhibited the power of the human spirit 
over matter. 

Classic art being suited to the expression 
of those sentiments which characterize ec- 
clesiastical architecture, as also emotions 
dictated by hero-worship, remained long in 
force in French painting, as is representa- 
tively shown by the pictures of David (1775- 
1825) and his school. But the progressive 
spirit of the age set flowing a current of 
feeling that ran counter to the classic method, 
that, if through the simplicity and directness 
gives majesty to the temple as dignity to the 
statue, is incapable of presenting modern 
ideals. Indeed, in its own age it may be 
questioned if classic art ever caught up with 
the advanced Greek thought, whose litera- 
ture, in the van of poetic interpretation, 
inspired by natural phenomena is an acute 
interpreter of human nature as developed 
prior to the new era. And the limitations 
of classic art as regards the present age are 
illustrated in the paintings of those artists 
who, like David, labored in the loom of their 
imagination, looking backward as weavers 
of Gobelin tapestry. 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 123 

David was given to a certain hard-grained 
literalism also, for he thought by delineating 
the body of a man and then encasing him in 
raiment he had insured his living likeness. 
But it is one thing to possess the body of a 
man and another to capture his soul, a truism 
evidently not calculated on by this eminent 
artist -when painting the portrait of Napo- 
leon Bonaparte, for, had Salvator Rosa re- 
presented this hero of David, and at that 
time of the world, it is not at all unlikely 
that a brigand's face would have been hinted 
at under the historic chapeau. 

Classicism fails at the threshold of mod- 
ern life ; it is impossible in landscape art 
except transfigured anew, — given the soul 
of the age. 

Nature is both subjective and objective, 
and the inner soul of outward form is an 
immanent energy — " coming softly, through 
the hollows and thickets, trading aslant in 
multitudes." It may not be treated academ- 
ically or with traditional rule and measure 
but intuitionally, heart pulsing against heart 
— God and man, the one in the flaming bush, 
the other with soul aflame. 

An impulse toward this worshipful feeling 



124 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is recognized in a realization of the power 
and majesty of the sea as presented by M. 
Gericault's Wreck of the Medusa, a work 
that elevated the artist to the place of leader 
in romantic art, and it is of interest to note 
that this painter's chief work presents nature 
and man face to face, — a Salvator Rosa's 
interpretation, but showing another phase, 
and where the elements overwhelm man in- 
stead of appearing to be allied with him in a 
chaotic unrest. 

It was the picture of the Wreck of the 
Medusa that changed the current of art 
from classic formalism to a living drama, 
and, establishing the romantic school, it was 
incentive to those exponents of nature and 
human nature who, like Corot and Rousseau, 
finally became prominent in interpreting the 
impression of nature upon the human spu'it, 
— M. Jacque and Rosa Bonheur representing 
a growing sympathy for lower animate life, 
while Millet and Meissonier were exponents 
of human nature, the former illustrating 
peasant, the latter civic life. 

And in the works of these four artists it 
is observable that the tendency is toward the 
democratic instead of aristocratic, toward the 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 125 

common life of men and animals, — a similar 
tendency to that observable in the selection 
of the " open air " by Watteau and Teniers 
as scene of their charming pictures, men and 
women in festive colors like birds in wooing 
time making merry in the sun ; for the latter 
artists delighted in the festive hours which 
redeem toil of its austerity. 

But it is necessary to note that, if demo- 
cratic in tendency, the works of Millet, the 
peasant artist, are expressive of little joy ; on 
the contrary they are witness to a feehng of 
servitude which is one of the features of the 
present era, and equally among the rich as 
the poor, the one being burdened with too 
much, the other with too little, the equaliza- 
tion of which is the problem of modern life, 
since the saddling of the equal yoke is neces- 
sary to a satisfactory cleaving by the plough- 
share to issue of a good harvest. 

But if Millet's pictures are expressive of 
servitude, are they not an impressive illustra- 
tion of an unquestioning stolidity ? 

Where exists the Promethean fire of aspira- 
tion which spurns that labor that gives meat 
for the body alone? 

Millet himself with his genius is a response 



126 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

to this question, since exercise of God-given 
faculties destroys servitude. But even then 
there is one soU for the cactus and another 
for the rose, — a liekl for one man and a 
gai'den for another, while each has his An- 
gelus, both under one sky ! 

This peasant artist presents a picture of 
imintelhgent toil, and the possibilities, which 
lie at every point of human Ufe where toil 
may be subordinated into automatic activity, 
the mind set free to blazon a path to higher 
matters, are unwittingly represented in the 
sweep of his brush in aerial perspective, as 
also the cradling environment of nature, 
calm, permanent, and inviolable : that tem- 
ple of God and his hosts whose entrance is 
oiven him who seeks it. 

The toiler without aspiration, the gleaner 
without ideals, and the wrecked and disown- 
ing who fail to subdue the wave by swim- 
ming, are the themes of pessimism, but 
happily they do not prevail, for the sun 
shines and God is good. 

After Gericault and Millet another senti- 
ment is origin of new expression, and which 
curiously is like the dawn after darkness if 
considered in contrast with the decadent 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 127 

period of art, for succeeding-, these artists 
appears the apostle of sunli<^ht, Monet, and 
whose followers may be called children of 
light instead of the Tenebrosi, since they as- 
sume that there is no darkness as such, the 
shadow but a witness to the sun, — a ray in 
a raiment of purple. 

Aerial perspective, light, the radiance 
around the earth, infatuated the Enghsh 
artist as it had Claude Lorraine, and the 
same sentiment inspires the modern school 
of art ; but it should be remembered that 
not in Claude Lorraine and Turner alone the 
craving to capture light gave impetus to the 
renaissance of the ideals of art. Rubens, the 
Flemish dramatist in art, not only was infat- 
uated with all those possibilities of instilling 
sunbeams into paints in view of which with 
much care each artist alike spreads his colors 
on his palette, — but he conquered difficul- 
ties to such an extent that Guido, seeing his 
work, exclaimed. Does he mix his paints with 
blood.? and that notwithstanding he himself 
was author of the Aurora, also familiar with 
Giorgione, the master colorist of Venice as 
was Rembrandt of Amsterdam. But Rubens, 
if he mixed his paints with blood, and so 



128 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

painted the rose in flesh, like Titian failed. 
Except as master inventor, dramatic and 
forcible as a delineator, he had no report to 
give of the ideal man who is uncharacter- 
ized, except as sometimes a bacchanalian, — a 
drunken Silenus with Satyrs and Bacchante, 
a Loyola, a Xavier, or in a stalwart Joseph, 
the too solid flesh apparent. And his Christs, 
an improvement on the weak representations 
of the Pre-Raphaelite period, have neverthe- 
less the stamp of this artist's nature. It 
might be concluded indeed that Rubens was 
born with all the intelligence of a man, but 
destitute of a soul like a rose without fra- 
grance, for, while his talent is indisputable, 
possessing energy, a classic student, with 
command of technique, a boundless inven- 
tion and the qualifications of the dramatist, 
he does not appeal to the human spirit ; 
scantily satisfying the intellect he leaves the 
heart unstirred. It is impossible to thmk 
of him among the unopulent and unfortu- 
nate and so studying human nature as did 
Rembrandt whose love of nature was the 
one influence of his life. 

The contrast between these two artists is 
most noteworthy : belonging to the same 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 129 

period, one born a little in advance of the 
other, and both of Salvator Rosa's time,^ they 
show the abiding influence of environment, 
that environment the result of innate affini- 
ties. And Rembrandt, a student of real 
life, with an unerring perception of charac- 
ter, occupies the enviable position of an in- 
terpreter of individualism maturing through 
the evolution of the human spirit. His hori- 
zon, it is true, is narrow, for he never visited 
Italy like Rubens, or like Goethe, the great 
exponent of human nature, but remained on 
watch in his own place of nativity. Here 
he had material, however, of the most desir- 
able quality. For the Dutch possess an in- 
herent positiveness of nature that assures to 
them a continuance among the families of 
men ; as stubborn as the oak, and as fertile 
of seed in the realm of truth and upright- 
ness, this people has maintained itself by 
inward streng-th rather than throug-h the 
favor of outward circumstance. Happy the 
artist whose perceptions were equal to the 
interpretation of such natures ! For here 
was undoubted force of character, not pas- 

1 Salvator Rosa, 1615-1673; Rubens, 1577-1640; Rem- 
brandt, 1607-1669. 



130 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

sionate, like the Italian, not emotional like 
the French, not realistic like Netherlanders, 
but having these qualities so blended that 
while persistently realistic, it, so to speak, 
stumbles upon the ideal. For instance, Rem- 
brandt painting a picture of Christ repre- 
sents the face not of Christ's own nationality 
— not of a Hebrew, but of a possible citizen 
of the Netherlands, so illustrating the uni- 
versality of Christ's nature, disclosing it to 
us so godlike that the spirit of his doctrines 
actualized makes every man a Christ, be his 
lineaments those of a Hollander or other 
nationality. 

This form of ideahsm is not always of 
outward observation, for while apparently it 
is hteral and objective, it is profoundly sub- 
jective. 

Rembrandt's treatment of light and shade 
is particularly characteristic. This may be 
seen by comparison with the works of the 
Tenebrosi — these artists assuming chiaro- 
scuro for the purpose of startling effect, 
covering, as has been said, their canvases 
with broad shadows, the light introduced 
reluctantly and limited to small area as 
apparently did Rembrandt, — but with what 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 131 

marvelous difference of effect ! Where in 
the Tenebrosi pictures is the lustre around 
and about the subject presented? Where 
is the suofsfestiveness of the immanence of 
spirit, the reminiscence of transfigurement of 
form into a being of light ? Rembrandt's pic- 
tures are an indirect statement of the evan- 
escence of visual forms that at any moment 
" these our actors may like the firmament 
dissolve and leave not a rack behind," — for 
the human face looks out from the shadows, 
as a traveler's face in passing is lit by a lamp 
hung by the way, — a moment, and the face 
is gone ! 

There is nothing in all Italian art (so rich 
with saintly faces by halos encircled) that 
equals this masterly expression of the un- 
abidingness of human life in a fixed sphere. 
Raphael sought to express transition from 
earthly to heavenly life by representation of 
the Madonna upon ascending clouds, and the 
rare face he has pictured brings to mind 
those inimitable lines in Stephen Phillips's 
" Herod : " — 

" Those eyes that bring upon us endless thoughts, 
That face that seems as it had come to pass 
Like a thing prophesied." 



132 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

But the painter, while so triumphant in his 
skill, fails to give that interpretation of the 
un substantiality of visuaHzed form which 
Rembrandt conveys even in his Anatomy 
Lecture, the most realistic of pictures, but 
more specially in The Night Watch. It is 
not difficult after viewing Rembrandt's works 
to imagine the artist walking the poorest 
streets of Amsterdam, looking into faces of 
common humanity as did Prince Buddha, 
but not as he, quailing at the sight. 

On the contrary he laid their case before 
his fellow-citizens in all honesty and candor 
of delineation, while the effect of these scenes 
upon this profound student of human nature 
is not without its record, for he suffered his 
imagination to have sway, not in these living 
portraits of humanity, but when portraying 
nature. Here, in the landscape, is a feeling 
of solitude, as though his deep soul had 
suffered in the wilderness, dismayed by the 
problems of life, for his landscapes, full of 
intense feeling, are representations of no par- 
ticular place, and as if conceived through 
melancholy reflections upon the phenomena 
of nature, perceiving its unlimited power to 
illustrate the conditions of the human spirit. 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 133 

As might have been aDticipated, succeed- 
ing Rembrandt, there arose a Dutch school 
of landscape painters, among whom Ruys- 
dael, Hobbema, and Cuyp are the more con- 
spicuous, Ruysdael showing a similar senti- 
ment to that exhibited by Rembrandt, his 
paintings being expressions of poetic melan- 
choly, while Hobbema shows a delight in 
sun-irradiated trees, and happy village life, 
as indeed does Cuyp. Wouvermans and Pot- 
ter are of the same school and period, these 
painters characterized by a sympathy for 
lower animate life, which afterward gave to 
the world Landseer's masterly portraits of 
deer and dogs and Rosa Bonheur's inter- 
pretations, these anticii3ating modern animal 
studies in literature, each showing the rapid 
approach of a unison between nature and 
human nature prophetic of the new Eden. 

It is of curious interest that while Hol- 
land gave birth to a master in painting, 
Germany, the Alma Mater of the ideal, 
cradle of music and literature, has few 
painters of influence, the sentiment being 
manifest the genius wanting. Thus Goethe's 
passion for art is representative, he desiring 
to express himself by the brush, but con- 



134 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

fined by the limitations common to great 
intellects to one medium, that being the pen. 
And for the reason of this combination 
of sentiment for art and inadequate skill 
it is all the more interesting to note the 
effort at a revival of German painting in the 
nineteenth century, a society having been 
formed in Rome in 1810 for that purpose. 
This society earned the name of Pre-Ra- 
phaelites owing to their purpose of return- 
ing to the old fifteenth century faith as re- 
presented by the works of Fra Angelico, 
Botticelli, and those painters succeeding 
them who appear to have been governed by 
religious feeling, the founders of the society 
claiming in Dilrer (1471-1528) and Hol- 
bein (1497-1543) that Germany possessed 
representative artists belonging to the same 
category, since they evinced equal fervency 
of religious feeling. But though the pro- 
moters of this society were influential in 
establishing a taste for religious painting, 
such works as Lessing's Luther, The Re- 
formation, and Hofmann's Boy Christ in the 
Temple, Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, 
apparently springing up in obedience to the 
changed current of sentiment, their effort 
failed of its object. 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 135 

Following this new departure in Germany, 
the promoters of which have since been 
called the Brethren, another society was in- 
augurated in 1847 in England, which, adopt- 
ing the tenets of the German society, called 
itself the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The 
tenet of this society is a matter of some 
uncertainty, since while some of its members 
are realists, others are idealists, while in no 
artist is found a counterpart to a Botticelli, 
or indeed a Perugino, this noteworthily prov- 
ing that the development of modern senti- 
ment and the attitude of the more matured 
mentality of man forbids a recessional in art. 

Pre-Raphaelism indeed is out of focus 
with the ideals of the nineteenth and twen- 
tieth centuries as classic art was out of har- 
mony with the period when appeared Corot, 
Millet, and Rosa Bonheur in France. And 
this is shown in the records of the society, 
whose members very rapidly fell away from 
the methods assumed at the beginning as 
fundamental to its establishment as soon as it 
was discovered that in applying those meth- 
ods the importance of the subject treated was 
minimized by the accessories, — as, for in- 
stance, happened in Holman Hunt's pictures, 



136 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

these losing their force, the theme being not 
more accentuated than the accessories. A 
defect that thrust back this otherwise great 
master into Hne with the little masters of 
Dutch genre art, whose representative artist, 
Gerard Dow (1613-1675), though a pupil of 
Rembrandt and therefore an adept in chia- 
roscuro, through want of sentiment is un- 
able to stir the heart, or to give that which 
is of every-day experience a suggestiveness 
that is essentially belonging to these experi- 
ences, they being the means of the evolution 
of the human spirit which it is the province 
of art to emphasize. 

The subjects selected by the Pre-Raphael- 
ite Brethren, while often religious, are marred 
by a modernism that is inevitable to the 
treatment in detail of facts that are only of 
interest by way of their symbolic meaning, 
this meaning having the effect of perspective 
in landscape which, fusing minor matters into 
a coherent whole, directs the attention to the 
one object characterizing the interpretation. 

Aiming at the truth the intended absolute 
realism of Holman Hunt's works, for exam- 
ple, is not such, for the idea is the absolutely 
real, and being the only permanent thing it 



NOT SHADOW BUT LIGHT 137 

should be the only object of expression in 
art. It is the meaning that Botticelli put 
into his pictures that touches the heart, this 
painter's devout spirit betrayed above all 
his partial success in delineation, a fact that 
the German Brethren perceived as did not 
Holman Hunt, taking his pictures as an evi- 
dence of the attitude of his mind. 

But the Germans with then- gift of ideality 
were unable to express the sentiment they 
desired to revoke into art ; Hofmann's paint- 
ings are little in advance of Hunt's, there 
being a literalness in them which suggests a 
drought in the realm of the ideal. 

Holman Hunt's pictures precipitated a dis- 
affection among the disciples of Pre-Raphael- 
ism, and what with the entrance of Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti, with a poetic temperament 
which like an orchid flourished in a foreign 
clime through independence of soil, English 
art recovered what had been gained through 
Turner, the truths of color, light, and atmos- 
phere assumed as of first importance since 
in nature all objects are perceived through 
this trinity. 

Rossetti perforce is an idealist ; a poet, and 
with an Itahan temperament, how was it pos- 



138 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

sible for him to fix his attention on the de- 
tailing a blade of grass ? Singing his way 
into the avenues of art, he conjured such 
an argosy of sprites about the heads of the 
Pre-Raphaelite Brethren that they began to 
dream dreams, and see signs. And symbol- 
ism in art returned with the subtile faces 
pictured by this exile from Italian skies, and 
Millais hastening the transition, bore witness 
to the change, Burne-Jones — pupil of Ros- 
setti — and Sir Frederick Leighton followed, 
and thus the threatened literalism in art was 
stayed. 



IDEALS AND " OUR OWN IMAGE " * 

Ideals are immanent in the cell of the bee 
and in the nest of the sparrow, and the de- 
velopment of design finally represented in 
architecture is prophesied by the crystal and 
the pine, inanimate as animate nature being 
impressed into the service of divine expres- 
sion. 

A curious intelligence is discovered, indeed, 
where is growth, the impetus of growth ap- 
parently originating in desire to formulate 
an idea that expresses delight, so manifest- 
ing what is in the Heart of God. And the 
completeness of parts, in crystal, flower, and 
tree, displaying a builder's instinct, immanent 
in nature, invites the attention to consider 
the work of the wasp, originator of paper- 
making, the aptitude of the spider in weav- 
ing, of the robin in plastering ; to admu'e 
the terra-cotta cup of the swallow and all 

1 Genesis i. 26. 



140 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the fine interlacements of birds' nests hid- 
den in thicket or on umbrageous stem ; for 
in these advanced achievements is observed 
the universal wisdom prodigal in endowments 
where substance exists. Nature has a crowd 
of artisans that are unwearying in manufac- 
turing objects of beauty, and man of neces- 
sity through his heirship is equally active in 
building new forms, transmuting metals, chip- 
ping stone, and founding architectural styles 
that satisfy his demand for expression of the 
ideal. Man in fact is only content when ex- 
pressing thought, wherefore it happens that 
he exists in a sphere of ideas made visible. 
City streets are paved with thought, thought 
is origin of the paper on our walls, of the 
carpet under our feet, of the cup we drink 
from, each thought having a history that is 
as inspiring to the pen of the romanticist as 
are the varied events of a human life, — that 
thought individualized and clothed with cir- 
cumstance. The network of common avoca- 
tions indeed is but expression of the evolu- 
tion of the human spirit that in the exercise 
of its inborn energies is forever assuming 
the role of a creative spirit — a son of God. 
Pressing forward, dedicating his faculties 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 141 

to the ideal, utility a means only to compass 
the grand purpose to environ himself with 
beauty as does the flower, his life becomes a 
song of praise. 

The lotos was a favorite example in the 
Orient to illustrate the dominance of divine 
energy which annually rehabilitated the veg- 
etal world, and this may furnish an example 
of the exercise of the creative energy of men 
in embodiment of ideals. For the fine arts 
are the flowers of thought, they are the em- 
bodiments of the aspiration of the human 
spirit, and appearing upon the stream of life, 
adorning it with beauty, they rise upon the 
vision like the lilies upon the waters of the 
sacred Nile. And shall it not be said that 
divine love thirsts for an externalization of 
thought whence the phenomena of nature, 
the beauty of star, flower, and bird ? Fiu:- 
thermore, that this immortal thirst universal 
in nature is intensified in human nature, 
whence the growth of expression, the steady 
evolution of art and literature, processes of 
thought generating new expression ? 

It is a breath of that aura, the limitless 
sphere of divinity that inspires the poet, — 
that gave firmness to the hand of Phidias 



142 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

and facility to the pen of Shakespeare. 
Inspiration is shown by artist and writer, 
these creative spirits experiencing momen- 
tous epochs when ideals arise before their 
inspired vision Hke a flock of birds soaring 
and singing their way into the wide fields of 
the world. Then it is an epic is born, — a 
lyric, or a sonnet. And then the artist 
hurriedly fills his canvas with scenes of 
beauty or an ideal face, the two prominent 
methods which are used to express ideals 
being a portrayal of man and a representa- 
tion of natural phenomena by means of the 
landscape picture, these two in their high- 
est development serving to express what 
form and phenomena typify to the human 
spirit ; a development in which the land- 
scape becomes an epitome of universal nature, 
and the human figure a representation, or 
image, of divinity. In the former, that is, 
the landscape, avoiding details which are 
obstacles to breadth, the artist sweeps away 
that sense of limitation enforced by the 
boundaries of natural vision, the merit of his 
work interpretation not imitation, its supreme 
value lying in a representation otherwise 
unseen of the experiences of the human 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 143 

spirit when face to face with the divine in 
nature. A comprehensive view, it permits no 
intrusion of the accidental and trivial; the 
lines are free, bold, and uncomplex, suggest- 
ing space, illimitable distance, and a sense of 
the universal, and so the human spirit seeking 
an environment consistent with its native 
quiet finds it, for in such a disposition of 
lines there is the spirit of sublimity which is 
uniformly calm, being remote from the vortex 
of transient activities. 

And it is breadth in art particularly, that 
brings to view the accord of forces which 
have ordered details into a complete whole, 
forces that are kindred to those in the souls 
of men, — massing harmonies in color and 
line, this comprehensive breadth produces a 
melody that is without sound, delighting the 
human spirit whose own elements have con- 
stituents of sublimity and luminosity, these 
voiceless except by means of artistic expres- 
sion. Appealing to spiritual exaltation the 
inspired picture emphasizes height by the 
lonely tree, or the buttressing rock so sug- 
gesting that imperious uplift of the mountain 
whose broad shoulders mantle themselves 
with the azure of heaven, while by defining 



144 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the ineffectual climb of a phalanx of girdling 
pines human limitations are suggested, these 
primeval minarets on the mountain side de- 
termininof veg^etal life's boundaries. Sug;- 

so o o 

gestions of and witnesses to truer harmonies 
than those of color and line, the mountain 
landscape competes ^vith the original scene ; 
having passed through the alembic of hiunan 
inspiration it bestows an exaltation of feeling- 
associated with the life of the spirit. 

Interpretation of the sublimity of an up- 
lift of rock, forest, and tableland is product 
of a vision dependent on the soul's sight, and 
sublimity is not more intrinsic to mountain- 
ous scenery than is color to a garden of 
flowers. This is evident in the obliviousness 
of the Greeks and Italians to the artistic 
susrsfestiveness of their environment when 
art had arrived at more or less completeness 
in skill of execution. 

Comprehensive as was the genius of Mi- 
chael Angelo, for example, there is no evi- 
dence that his imagination was consciously 
quickened by the mountain heights about 
him, when seizing on those marble masses 
lying in their depths he triumphed in what 
chisel and hammer were to disclose through 
them. 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 145 

And the campagna at the foot of environ- 
ing hUls and mountains gave little apparent 
delight to the artist, if influencing his tem- 
perament, for when art flourished in Rome, 
level or mountain had yet to be interpreted. 
And as it is due to science that the vision of 
what is unseen in organic life is made clear 
through the microscope, so it may be said 
that advanced intelligence has ennobled the 
majesty of the mountains. 

The sentiment that has bidden the traveler 
forsake the city and seek the mountains is 
a mark of grooving apprehension of what 
the modern painter has interpreted, an inter- 
pretation in such advance of the ancient 
artist that it is like a new conception, a truth 
for the first time discovered and divulged. 

But the seekers of beauty and sublimity 
when in their immediate presence, if without 
the soid's sight given the artist, are liable to 
find naught but stone and earth heaped up, 
and crude ; their apprehension not yet ma- 
tured, these visitors retire disappointed. 

And all forms of nature are alike in their 
demand for an interpreter's vision, for the 
book of nature may be read only by those 
schooled in its language. The low level of 



146 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the plain is monotonous and of no interest 
to the uninformed, while the inner vision 
perceives that it seeks the sky as the moun- 
tain whose pyramidal thrust charges the 
cloudy infantry of heaven, for its breadth 
and onward movement are unbroken to the 
very gates of dawn or sunset while its calm 
distances are emphasized by vanishing lines 
converging and beating retreat from the 
immediate and definite. But if the human 
spirit delights in space and distances, so feel- 
ing the triumph of spirit over matter, there 
is joy in the cloistered stillness of the wood- 
lands where occasional shafts of sunbeams 
dance upon the populous turf, or, striking 
down the slender stem of a birch, plunge 
an arrow into the wrinkled rivulet at its 
foot. 

In the woodland, as on the mountain or 
the plain, there is escape from that importu- 
nate personal factor whose extortionate de- 
mands exhaust the native elasticity of the 
spirit. And the landscape j)icture is a re- 
sponse to weariness in much doing, much 
striving, and many stumblings by the way. 
It affords refuge for the human spirit fleeing 
abrasion from too manifest personalities. 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 147 

Personality, the individual selfhood, harasses 
if inciting: achievement at the slumberous 
epoch of thought's germination, and this 
disturbing element always demanding dra- 
matic action is incompatible to landscape art, 
at whose threshold noisy activity is dropped. 

Delight in an absorption of self into the 
absolute founded the creed of the Indies ; 
delight in self-manifestation is at basis of 
activities in manifold directions in the West- 
ern world, and landscape art is an interpre- 
tation of the former delight and figure paint- 
ing of the latter, inasmuch as the one is 
expressive of the continuously calm, the con- 
templative, and permanent, and the other 
interpretive of the dramatic and personal. 

A demand for respite from a world over- 
full of dramatic forces, each contending for 
the desired goal, has led the adventurous foot 
among the glacial heights of the Alps and 
Andes, whose remoteness from human en- 
vironment offers seclusion, and it has made 
the hermit and the monk, the one seeking 
the cloistered woodland, the other the monas- 
tic retreat, for repose, where is no sound of 
obtrusive footfall, is a balm to the overtaxed 
spirit, and this same demand for repose is 



14S XATURE AND HTMAN NATURE 

satisfied by the picture -which permits no 
intrusions, — for it is the artist's privilege to 
sechide the mountain's heights with a peren- 
nial blue, suggesting the silence and majesty 
of the Unnamable and Perfect, — to him, 
indeed, there is no common day reyealing 
the rigid and stark body of the giant form, 
unyeiled and unconsecrated ; a place of yi- 
sion, the alter of the gods, as was conceived 
in days when none but the consecrated foot 
of priest dared climb its solitary heights, the 
mountain appears on the artist's canyas as a 
cumulus cloud realized and permanent, now 
yibrating and tremulous with heat, or threat- 
ening and yast, the hghtning, cleaving its 
front, reveahng through the sundered ya- 
pors depths vet more threatening and ob- 
scure. So presented, it is not alone a pictui'e 
of a mountain, but an assurance of that too 
often forgotten fact that " the seen is a mani- 
festation of the unseen," — a concept that 
is a revelation similar to that onven throusfh 
the inyention of the telescope, and by which 
instrument it came to be known that the 
earth is not a pivotal point around which the 
heayens reyolve. 

Scientific discovery, indeed, has laid its 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 149 

axe to the root of many errors, and among 
which the error of self-importance is not the 
least conspicuous. 

But it may be presumed that, corrected of 
its errors, the human spirit is not echpsed 
long, nor does it ever assume the role of a 
burned-out planet, for its nature is luminous 
and penetrative ; it will neither remain in 
darkness nor permit its neighbors to do so. 
Does not water rise to the level of its source ? 
So does the soid ! De^aous is the pilgrim- 
age, but secure, — if retaining the primal 
elements of the spring. 

Pastoral painting was imitated by the 
pastoral poet ; he it was that began the chant 
to nature, late though the epoch of human 
advancement, for the poet, being a maker, is 
herald in aU evolutions of the intelligence 
of man appHed to manifestations of the un- 
seen. Thus when at last paeans were sung 
of nature's harmonies, then followed color 
symphonies, these representing light, air, 
foliage, shadow, and sun, the picture succeed- 
ing the poem, not at once, but many years 
after. 

Virgil chanted his pastorals, and thereafter 
came as distant echoes the landscape studies 



150 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of Titian, and each were anticipative o£ a 
sentiment for natural beauty -whence were to 
arise representations through pen and brush 
whose epochs are the storm-cloud, the tor- 
nado, and the joyous advance of spring. 

And of all forms of art, dealing least with 
human passions and the details of personal 
existence, landscape art is the least capable 
of flattery, while it is at the same time full 
of appeal ; impersonal, it arouses that sub- 
conscious sense of unity in nature, a sense 
that provides unexpected assurances of the 
existence of things unseen. For unity in 
nature discloses unity in the phenomena of 
force in its culminations and consistent re- 
sults, — a unity that leads to the certainty 
that the divine mind in its reaches and re- 
sources is one. And an insight into these 
matters leads art into an idealism that has 
for its end a representation of unity, showing 
the relations of forces to phenomena to be 
bindinof after the manner of the relations 
of mind to matter, — showing that function 
is requisite to force, and body to spirit, their 
unity a security to continuity, while the ex- 
istence of one is a necessity to the other, a 
duality indivisible, constant, and self-main- 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 151 

tained. Astronomy has shown that the 
earth is a star, himinous in the sphere of its 
orbit ; and art declares the ideal ensphering 
the real, — that ideal a representation of the 
meaning of the real, for art laid hold of sym- 
bolism from the beginning, — the natural 
symbohsm derived from the fact that form 
is expression of force. 

But the ancients, though perceiving that 
objects were visible signs of unseen power, 
were unable to grasp the idea of unity appre- 
hended by later investigations in which the 
universe came to appear as one, a coherent 
whole. It is modern science that has shown 
that the apparent lines of demarcation in 
living organisms, for example, are in fact 
vanishing, becommg altogether indistinct in 
convergence ; and these developments deter- 
mining conceptions of unity jn complexity, 
though belonging to that which is termed 
the exact sciences, are in simple following 
with the inspiration of imagination which 
annealed objects into relations which, while 
actually existent, were not established in so 
far as outward appearance was concerned. 

Art and science are seldom divorced, for 
the one is an exponent and the other a seeker 



152 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of the truth. It is the artist, however, that 
stumbles as he seeks to manifest the ideal 
•which his art has indicated. To find that 
breadth spread out before him by earth 
and sky which is prophesied in Greek art — 
a breadth that appeals directly to the human 
spirit ; to combine and balance Hues, hmit- 
ing them only at the point of evanescence, so 
making musical modulations to the eye, as 
rhythm of verse is made in measure and 
metre; to clothe with light and hide in 
shadow ; to give subtle hints to human pre- 
sence, or better still an invocation of that 
presence by means of tender grace and as- 
surances of actualities — to do this called 
forth a new order of genius indeed, a genius 
that recognizes in itself conditions typified 
and emphasized in nature, as also attributes 
that are shadowed forth by nature. 

And it was necessary to the development 
of this new genius that all those achieve- 
ments in sculpture and painting in both 
Greece and Italy, training the artist to con- 
cepts of beauty and truth, should have cul- 
minated, so preparing the way for work in a 
field heretofore unexplored ; nay, more, it 
was necessary that science should disclose 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 153 

the serial development of the human figure 
and its relative importance to the advance 
of creative energy in control of matter in 
order that the suggestiveness of nature 
should find interpretation, for how else was 
man's understanding to be released from the 
haughty self -laudation of the past ? How 
discover the ideals and the all-pervading 
Presence in natui'e ? Experience goes before 
structure, rather knowledge by application 
evolves structure in the physical world, so 
also in the intellectual realm, for experience 
provided by environment induces mentality. 
Inventiveness, for example, is developed 
through knowledge, by means of which the 
adaptations of insects to environment is 
accomplished — they who put to shame the 
sluggard by their ceaseless energy, who, in 
consequence of aroused inventive powers, 
enlarge their boundaries, so increasing their 
brain power, strengthening the capacity-for 
application of its energies in the same man- 
ner that the physical body gains strength by 
exercise. 

One of the principal obstacles to the 
growth of landscape art was the idea of 
the slight importance of environment, thus 



154 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the landscape came to be regarded as the 
supplement to the figure, an idea stubbornly 
maintained, for it is in accordance with the 
earlier view that the universe is but a back- 
ground to man, a view that was held for 
many generations, and among peoples, like 
the Assyrians and Romans, whose imagina- 
tions had been enkindled to a sense of 
beauty, in the one case shown by floral orna- 
mentations, and in the other by representa- 
tion of the beauty of the human form, this 
proving that until science interferes by means 
of a more exact knowledge of the relations 
of things, the sense of beauty, owing to its 
limitation, is likely to misdirect the labors 
of art in the interpretation of the ideal. 
A necessity for accurate information is note- 
worthily exemphfied in the ignorance of 
artists of the wide-reaching law of perspec- 
tive up to a comparatively recent period, 
an iof-norance that grew out of a want of 
investigation as much as a lack of ability. 
For the conventionalized flower delineations 
in Assyrian sculpture, and the adroit combi- 
nation of diverse images in Egypt, those 
images of combined parts as distinct as body 
of man and head of beast, declare a power 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 155 

to fuse into a coherent whole diverse ob- 
jects, a power that when developed should 
make an accomplished landscapist. And this 
fact,, representative in the evolution of intel- 
lectualism, is one of the many in which is 
observed the dominance of a traditional atti- 
tude of thought whereby progress is ob- 
structed, a dominance that is reinforced by 
the natural tendency of man epitomized in 
the child, who is an irrepressible egoist until 
intelligence ripens, his misconceptions as- 
sailed by incontrovertible facts. And it is 
in view of explainable facts the educated 
imagination rebuilds its structures, as the 
child, developed into man, rebuilds his con- 
cepts, whence it happened that a new field 
of art was discovered ; for the importance of 
environment understood, the landscape was 
no longer the background, but the sphere 
of man, which, like the au^, held him in orbit, 
maintaining his integrity through natural 
environment. 

That the mediaeval artists, as for instance 
Perugino and Raphael, aiming at atmospheric 
effects, studied a proper setting to their 
pictures is evident, and here and there some 
rare spirit escaped from the importunate 



156 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

thrall of human egoism, giving an environ- 
ment, for example, to the Madonna, ideal 
of passionate piety, an environment which, 
though subordinate, prophesied the advent 
of Claude and Salvator Rosa, who, together 
with Poussin, laid a foundation to landscape 
art. But it is evident even when so initi- 
ated interest in natural beauty was slow in 
gaining place, for a dominant preference for 
human figures subjected Poussin's pictures to 
the intrusion of inconsequent figures which 
impaired their profound suggestiveness. 

And it was a long time after this artist 
flourished that such tendencies held sway ; 
indeed, it may be said that they continue to 
exist in the popular mind, and the picture 
without representation of human life, or that 
has some association which is cherished 
through personal acquaintance with the scene, 
is regarded with indifference. This is espe- 
cially noteworthy in the United States, for 
the average American is not appreciative of 
the landscape, the visitor of expositions seek- 
ing first the picture of the figure painter, 
wherefore the artist, dependent on patron- 
age, struggles with representations of semi- 
madonnas, and consequently faces ungra- 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 157 

cious to the eye look down upon the visitor 
from the overcrowded wall. And in conse- 
quence of this taste for figure painting the 
talents of a landscapist are often left to de- 
generate into mere imitations. Copies of the 
Italian masters or of the English coterie, for 
example, who from portraits of nobility, that 
privileged class to whom art must needs pay 
deference, at last evolved typical figures that 
were but simple, fresh, apple-cheeked Eng- 
lishwomen in a picturesque costume and a 
yet more picturesque hat. 

Copyists of these types are numerous on 
exposition walls, an effort in a later period 
at* a Burne-Jones effect, this manifesting it- 
self in diverse ways. Some exceptions, how- 
ever, should be made, and in these the artist 
declares himself unspoiled by popular taste, 
his chosen specialty legitimate, as in the 
case of the author of the so-called " Gibson 
girl," the painter disclosing real imagination, 
equal to that exhibited by foreign masters 
in art. 

The face of the Gibson girl, indeed, is 
remarkable, representing an eagerness to lay 
hold of life, a looking for the rose and find- 
ing the thorn, an inarticulate pain at pending 



158 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

flight of youth, dawning experience, and pet- 
ulant scorn, insubordination to destiny, and 
withal possibilities after the cataract is past ! 
An interpretation, rare in modern art, this 
figure, like beauty, has an excuse for being. 
But the representation is but a single type, 
it is not national, for as yet America's ideal 
woman has no existence. Inchoate elements 
are seen, together with a suggestion of uni- 
form traits, but these are marked by a local- 
ism which in modern figure painting, as in 
the novel, has common sway. For our Eves 
are under the scaljDel knife of curious 
Adams, who, discovering that they are not 
madonnas, idealize less than actualize, this 
done under the exhausted receiver of an ex- 
tinct faith. 

The manifest trend of art toward figure 
painting in the United States is all the more 
deplorable, as landscape art should have a 
peculiar indigenousness in a country where 
the most prominent productions of literature 
are imbued with love of nature, these show- 
ing the early tendency of imagination in the 
New World towards the pastoral and undra- 
matic. A fact that, since poet and painter 
are kin, suggests a scanty soil for the genu- 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 159 

ine figure painter, as scanty indeed as that 
furnished by Italy for landscape art. 

But this brings to the consideration an- 
other factor in the cause of preference for 
figure painting manifested in Italy and at 
the present epoch in the United States. At 
the time that the fine arts flourished in Italy 
it may be remembered that there was a 
traditional tendency to militarism and its 
consequent hero-worship. 

The Roman people delighted in expressions 
of the dramatic elements of life ; regarding 
natural phenomena with little interest, an 
exhibition of human emotion and human 
force was more desirable. The genius of the 
people, indeed, declared itself in those repre- 
sentative men the Caesars, and in an emphasis 
of a Divine PersonaHty, which was the theme 
of the Miracle Plays, together with ceremo- 
nials rehearsing the Hours of Agony of Christ, 
these presenting to the excitable populace the 
figure of a God crucified whereby the mind 
became inured to cruelty, — as happens in- 
deed to-day in theatrical representations of 
crime, when emotions, excited by semblances, 
cease to be alive to actualities, their occur- 
rence no longer occasion of surprised horror 



160 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

at exceptional ferocity, the tenderness of 
sympathy, falsely excited, destroyed. And 
these dramatic ceremonies of worship were in 
harmony with the spiiit of militarism domi- 
nant in Rome and which was in keeping with 
the warlike mstincts disclosed in the history 
of the Israelites, that history claimed to be 
the word of God. And this spirit was not 
less shown in rehgious rites than in litera- 
ture. Virgil sang of arms, Dante of impla- 
cable vengeance. The oratory of Savonarola 
suggested the sword and battlefield, his 
words, instigating war and revolt, seldom 
persuasive, his arguments closing in upon the 
church as with fire and pillage. And so it 
happened that, a revolutionary in spirit, Sa- 
vonarola was caught and expired in the con- 
flagration of which he was incendiary. 

And was it a necessary martyrdom ? Is 
there not a steady turn of the wheel of pro- 
gress in the affairs of men, a security that 
the soul that sinneth it shall die, even as in 
blight of mother plant the seed is destroyed, 
— and as with individuals so with nations, 
while the true and noble partaking of the 
divine spirit remain ? 

What need of invectives and abuse, to 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 161 

what purpose incendiary speech, when God is 
alive and immanent in the world? 

To stir up strife in Rome was an easy 
thing, the Roman laying hold of his sword 
as readily as his toga, both his daily equip- 
ment and equally of common usage. Divi- 
sions of families frequent, street fights of 
common occurrence, patriotism another name 
for war, this was the bed-rock on which Ital- 
ian art established itself, and surely it might 
have been anticipated that the art, imper- 
sonal and undramatic, leading to return to 
the life which conforms itself to the eternal 
laws of progressive development, would find 
little encouragement. That polytheistic ele- 
ment to which the Latin race is heir, and 
which engendered the hero-worship rife in 
Rome, forbade, indeed, the introduction of 
an art which is in a large sense Pantheistic, 
including in that term worship of the divine 
immanent in nature. For what concern was 
it to the man whose manhood lived in his 
sword, and whose emotions were touched 
alone by affairs immediate and personal, 
whether dawns came and went, gilding the 
Alps and transfiguring them ? How was 
that man to gather " the sweet influences of 



162 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the Pleiades," or perceive the mystic "bands 
of Orion " ? What, indeed, was the beauty 
of night or day to such as he ? Fill then 
the galleries of art with pictures of heroes of 
family frays, with heroines of brutal crimes ; 
display muscular force, unconsecrated breasts, 
and unhallowed nudities ; tamper with deli- 
cacy and stupefy the sensibility to the true, 
beautiful, and good — and the instincts that 
are common to an epoch of militarism are 
best satisfied. 

It has been said that inspiration adopted 
two prominent methods to express the ideal, 
the one a portrayal of the human figure, the 
other a representation of natural phenomena. 
These two methods of expression hold some- 
thing of the relations existing between epic 
and lyric poetry, the one representatively 
personal, the theme "arms and men," the 
dramatis personae^ heroes, and the other, 
pastoral, even rhapsodiacal, its theme natu- 
ral phenomena. 

Epic poetry was initiated in a strenuous 
egoism, nature being subordinated to human 
nature, and it was this strenuous egoism that 
inspired the primeval artist to represent di- 
vinity in the form of man. At the begin- 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 163 

nin^, crude figures were cut in stone, delin- 
eated on bark, or painted on the skin of wild 
animals, these enforcing the idea of personal 
divinity, an idea that was a very sufficient 
inspiration to figure drawing surely and 
which ultimately gave rise to figures of re- 
markable beauty, these being products of 
long periods in which a knowledge of inade- 
quacy of skill is evident while there is a con- 
stant effort toward more satisfactory expres- 
sion, this knowledge, shown by the symbols 
appended declaring the intent and purport 
of the imaofe. Conscious of failure the 
primitive skill was put to exercise in the way 
of addenda, so to speak, and it is notable 
that while symbols held then- place in presen- 
tation of divinity, figure drawing remained 
puerile and crude, for intellectual activity 
is occasioned by both the demand and the 
necessity for expression. Supplied v^dth an 
easy escape from difficult labor, his indolence 
of mind predisposed the artist to retain tradi- 
tionary methods from generation to genera- 
tion. Thence the excessive tardiness of this 
great achievement, the portrayal of the hu- 
man form. It may be stated indeed that, 
in that degree dependence was made on the 



164 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

symbol, the merit of the work gained or 
lost. This is represented in the history of 
Greek art, which culminated when extrinsic 
explanations were discarded, real life deter- 
mining expression. 

The history of the gradual evolution of 
images of the human form may be compared 
to the structural development of the human 
form itself, — this a manifestation of a uni- 
versal dominance of a constructive agent, 
the maker of all form, who, in being the 
creator, has none the less the inertness of 
matter to overcome, which, retarding the 
evolution of man from the animal, typifies 
the gradual development of its image and 
figurement in art. A comparison that may 
be carried into detail, for the ideal has its 
prefigurement in lower animate hfe, and ex- 
isting in nature, it exists in human nature. 
Thence the likeness of concept in primitive 
expression to the most advanced ideal repre- 
sented by Greek art, and whence it follows 
that skill in production, acumen as to appro- 
priate methods of emphasis in contour or 
movement, are not assurances of a new ideal, 
these being in fact superficial and even liable 
to lead to the mechanical and unelastic rendi- 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 165 

tion of the workshop, for the very finish of 
a marble may destroy trenchancy of expres- 
sion, since an idea must come hot from the 
soul, which, indeed, too far from its source 
like a bolide is extinguished. 

And the ideals of the human spirit are 
ever repeating themselves as are repeated 
nature's types, which also are hastening to- 
ward completeness of expression. Coursing 
through mineral, vegetal, and animal king- 
doms, rising in the hot flood of life, divine 
energy is one in principle, distinguishable in 
no case through diversity of channel as a 
new energy. And of the diverse productions 
of art the same energy beats up with savage 
or scholar's pulse. For it may be said that 
the simple recognition of divinity in human- 
ity through an image of wood or stone, if 
late or early, if in the age of stone, iron, 
bronze, or at last of gold, declares an arche- 
typal ideal which is distinguishable through 
all diversity of representation. An ideal 
that is present before and after educative 
influences ; a figure which looms up in the 
imagination of men, a menace or a guerdon, 
disturbing that lethargy of will which de- 
feats improvement while mciting an increas- 



166 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ing self -development ; a figure that is a re- 
presentative personality : individuaKsm in 
the aggregate, the Divine Father of all. 

But if the Greeks did not originate while 
they expressed the ideal, if their figure was 
the manifestation of a common and universal 
concept, to them must be ascribed resources 
of expression that were individual and here- 
tofore unknown. 

Greek art achieved victory over dull weight, 
and in its statues there is a kindred acquisi- 
tion of power that is also acquired by vege- 
tal life, a power that dominates the force 
of gravity, as the white-stemmed birch, for 
example, and by which this Daphne of the 
woods, rising from the earth to shimmer and 
sparkle in the sun, sustains itself in opposition 
to that force, — a force to combat which all 
resistance must be mamtained, either as put 
forth by skill of man in sculpture of the 
human figure, or as put forth by the tree. 
And it is this resistance to the force of grav- 
ity, together with an absence of apparent 
effort, that is characteristic of Greek sculp- 
ture. In the Apollo Belvedere every line is 
contributive to a self-sustained uprightness 
of posture though the weight is confided to 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 167 

the right foot, the image seemingly but now 
sprung from heaven to earth, there alighting 
"with easy poise and assuming the majestic 
aspect of an ideal figure — a Light Bearer, 
so to speak, prophetic of the vocation of the 
human spirit. 

If the numerous images of the solar gods 
of Greece were compared with sculptures of 
Egypt, this apparent freedom from a force 
dominating marble would be particularly 
noticeable. The Greek sculptor by a mar- 
velous subtilty, discovering the secret of 
equilibriimi preserved in a buoyancy of move- 
ment, — a movement which exists in the 
statue only by association, — suggests a con- 
trol over weight surpassing that attained by 
the human will in locomotion. Contrast this 
alertness with Egyptian statues, and their 
solid fixity of attitude assumes the appear- 
ance of immobile weight, an appearance, how- 
ever, purposely made manifest, for these suave 
sweet-tempered kings of the Nile, inalert, their 
arms fixed for an eternal repose, their faces 
turned smihngly to the sun, contentment 
even in the wide leonine eyes directed to the 
far horizon, impersonate the ideal of the race, 
carrying the impression of security in the 



168 NATURE AND HUISIAN NATURE 

unvarying' sources of life — that life derived 
from the illimitable resources of solar energy. 
But the Egyptian idea of solar energy 
must not be conceived to be materiahstic : it 
was that of a Ruler of Light who is mani- 
fested in the visible universe by hght. And 
a desire for perpetuity held in common with 
all forms of life, and which in man became a 
craving for immortahty of individual being, 
gave an emphasis in Egyptian art on the 
secure and unvarying, this sentiment partic- 
ularly enforced in the conventionalized por- 
traits of the kings, these rulers of men be- 
lieved to become sun-gods by a mystic 
assimilation of the properties of divinity, 
those properties solarizing the human spirit, 
it becoming limiinous, — " sound and immor- 
tal as the sun," to use a phrase of Egyptian 
scripture. And this view of the godhke, it 
is evident, gave a different and a distinctive 
feature to Egyptian expression in art, a 
rigorous conventionality inducing homoge- 
neity also fixing the presentation of the ideal 
and thus giving a stability to the national 
concept, a stability most desirable since per- 
petuity was the Egyptian's chief object in 
life. And the attainment of this stable form 



IDEALS AND "OUR OWN IMAGE" 169 

of the ideal in Egypt is a prominent example 
of the response of human invention to the 
demands of the human spirit. Furthermore, 
it is the force of inventiveness, to which man 
is heir through his series of forbears, that 
has given to Egyptian art a unique place in 
the evolution of expression, — a place impos- 
sible to deny it when compared with Greek 
art. For inalert, gentle, but with an unbend- 
ing majesty, the statues of Egypt assert the 
possession of an ideal which appeals by con- 
trast to the restless activity of that modern 
civihzation m which Hellenic ideals have had 
so great an influence. Greek art, it was said 
above, by a marvelous subtilty of understand- 
ing dominated the inert stone whence there 
sprang to lifelike form Apollo, god of light ; 
but Egyptian art gave meaning to the inert 
mass without hiding its tendencies, not seek- 
ing to contravene but to abide by natural 
phenomena ; an unlikeness in piu'pose which 
characterized the two races, for art is a reflec- 
tion of the human spirit, presenting visibly 
its characteristic sentiment too-ether with 

o 

those prevaihng traits and aspirations which 
make up individuahsm, this a product and 
apparent end of human development. 



VI 

BLINDNESS AND VISION 

The Egyptian ideal, represented in art, 
was based on confidence in perpetuity, that 
confidence maintained by a belief that up- 
rightness of conduct prevents the disintegra- 
tion of the soul exactly as conformity to 
natural laws prevents the disorganization of 
the solar universe, a belief that contributed 
to that serenity which is the preeminent 
sentiment characterizing Egyptian art. The 
Hellenic ideal, disclosed in Greek art, substi- 
tuting intellectualism for moral truth, sub- 
ordinating the rigorous self-rule demanded 
by Egyptian doctrines to freedom of action, 
represents the aesthetic rather than the ethical 
attributes of human nature. Esthetic ten- 
dencies, unless overruled by an ethical senti- 
ment, engender self-gratification, and when 
based on an idea that all phenomena are tran- 
sitory it leads to the return to simple animal 
life, a life which rejoices in the present, hav- 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 171 

ing little concern for the future except after 
the manner of plants and animals. All ex- 
amples of prehistoric art in Greece betray 
this simpler condition, and are illustrative of 
the sentiment which obtained at that period 
in Grecian civilization when human nature was 
in its elemental stage of growth. Of these 
examples the sculptures upon gravestones 
are the most representative, these betraying 
the attitude maintained toward the unseen. 
For example, that gravestone which was 
found just inside the famous Lion Gate 
(above six graves, the so-called pit graves, or 
shaft graves, of Mycense), the sculptures on 
these stones betraying neither sorrow nor 
fear, for here is a charioteer driving at full 
speed, opposed to him a single warrior, 
whose object seems to be to stay the course 
of the inmate of the chariot, while immedi- 
ately above the animal driven is a crescent 
moon, a symbol that was used at a primi- 
tive epoch to illustrate the renewal of vernal 
together with the resurrection of human lif e,^ 
a most ingenious device, often supplying the 
place of an epitaph when written language 
was unknown. 

^ Athens, National Museum. (See Masks, Heads, and 
Faces.) 



172 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

The same security of feeling is betrayed 
in the so-called Harpy tomb/ the sculptures 
denoting, through the emblems egg, flower, 
fruit, and a cow suckling her calf (an appli- 
cation of the Egyptian Hathor myth, it is not 
unlikely), an entire trust in nature's unvary- 
ing renewal of the dominant force of life. 
The same sentiment is exhibited also in the 
grave monument of Aristion,^ an example 
of early Attic sculpture in Pentelic marble, 
where the figure is that of a warrior with a 
staff in his hand after the method used in 
representation of the risen Osiris, lord over 
the dead in Egyptian portrayal of the resur- 
rection, and in portrait statues, as for exam- 
ple a figure in wood of the Fourth or Fifth 
Dynasty (2800-2500 b. c, or earlier), this 
statue,^ found in the cemetery of Sakkarah, 
having in his hand a staff as a man of 
authority and so bearing the name given by 
Arab workman : Sheikh-el-Beled, that is, the 
Chief of the Village — a natural interpreta- 

* London, British Museum. Probably of the sixth cen- 
tury B. c. 

2 Athens, National Museum. 

^ Gizeh Museum ; the Louvre ; vignettes in the Book 
of the Dead, and on the sepulchral monuments (Egypt), 
etc. 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 173 

tion, but too limited when applied to the 
illustration of the state of the dead, the staff 
having a similar significance in the hand of 
the image of the departed that wings ap- 
pended to mortuary figures now have, both 
representing power of locomotion and re- 
newed vital force, — that is, resurrection. 

The monument of Aristion ^ (of the sixth 
century) suggests a like method of expression 
of a belief in resurrection to that employed 
in Egypt, exhibiting a tranquil security that 
is the pecidiar trait of the sculptures of the 
Harpy tomb. And this sentiment prevails 
in all the early mortuary sculpture of Greece, 
and, indeed, it is but in improved skill of 
execution that discrimination can be made 
between early and late periods of mortuary 
work, the sentiment being the same. The 
grave relief of Hegeso, of a period two hun- 
dred years later than that of Aristion, is 
pervaded by kindred feeling, for there is no 
allusion to death, it being a picture, seen as 
through a doorway, of a woman and her 
attendant, viewing a necklace taken from its 
casket. It is at this period there appears 
to have been a disposition to introduce the 

1 Atheus, Dipylon Cemetery. 



174 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

view, common to primitive nations, that the 
dead continue the vocations of their earthly 
life, — and this idea doubtless was occasion 
of selecting some representative act, such as 
the heroism exliibited by a cavalryman, as in 
an Attic grave relief (perhaps of the fourth 
century b. c.).^ Types all of the Greek 
method of dealing v^ith subjects relating to 
the departure of life, in none is betrayed 
anxiety, or profound grief, or stress on probity 
of character as in Egypt. The archaic, the 
prehistoric, and the age of Pericles, periods 
of literary as also artistic development, are 
each characterized by a serene independence 
of fear of death or of grief, a sentiment 
that is shown in the lineaments of all Greek 
statues, whether mortuary or temple images, 
whether the robed " maidens " of the Acrop- 
olis, sculptures of the archaic period ; whether 
the gymnast — Discobolus of Myron — of 
the transitional period, the Semnian Athena, 
the Caryatides from the Erechthemn, or the 
bride captured by a centaur, for in all the 
same expression prevails, which is that of 
unassailable calm, — the lineaments without 
individuality and of the national type. Ex- 

1 Rome, Villa Albani. 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 175 

ceptlons prove the rule, and this obtains in 
the sculpture of the sarcophagus termed 
the mourning women,^ these figures, through 
their attitude more than their faces, express- 
ing varying phases of grief. The period 
of this remarkably beautiful work has been 
assigned to somewhere near the middle of 
the fourth century. The sarcophagus is in 
the form of an Ionic temple ; between the 
columns are the figures of the women, and 
above the cornice a funeral procession. But 
the sarcophagus of the mourning women was 
exhumed on the site of a necropolis of Sidon, 
in Phoenicia, its locality suggesting influences 
of diverse character from that which obtained 
in Athens, as the contrasting sentiment shown 
by the grave relief of Hegeso also indicates. 
It seems to have been contrary to the Greek 
spirit to represent human sorrow, — that sor- 
row which is limned on many modern faces. 
The Caryatides of the Erechtheum bore their 
burdens grandly, even buoyantly as a woman 
sportively lifts and tosses her child above her 
head. There is simplicity, sweetness, seren- 
ity, security in the women's faces, — nay, 
happiness and content ; they lived in the 

* Constantinople. 



176 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

hour, and existed as the plants exist, flower- 
ing and passing on to another spring. Thus, 
hght-hearted, Hegeso's thought is on the 
necklace taken from the casket her attend- 
ant has brought, — she seeks to beautify 
herself, — a Greek, she has aesthetic taste. 

Intelligence is an attribute that is compat- 
ible to an unethical habit of mind ; devoted 
to reason, it has then none of the quality 
of the affections, an attribute shared by aU 
animate life, it is typified in the Apollo Bel- 
vedere, which bears as little impression of 
tenderness or compassion as a beam of light, 
and which, indeed, may be called a light 
bearer, being representative of that intellec- 
tualism which commits the human mind to 
the exercise of reason, and through which 
the affections are often subordinated, condi- 
tions which are betrayed in the attributes 
ascribed to Zeus, his emblem the thunder- 
bolt ; for power is the god of the intellect, 
not love ! 

And love, indeed, becomes a capricious 
slave in the Greek pantheon, an apotheosis of 
power insuring its servitude, that power re- 
presented by virile paternity impersonated 
by Zeus, for example, armed with a thunder- 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 177 

bolt, and so giving birth to wisdom or intel- 
ligence, — a conception that is suggestive of 
the trend of Greek thought, for the mythic 
presentation of Zeus, as the god of thunder, 
is overlaid by a strata of new ideas, the 
prunitive being simply the concept of a virile 
physical force, a gigantic man ! 

The Greek ideal of love began with an 
apotheosis of motherhood. In the earher 
myths it is Cybele (Rhea), daughter of hea- 
ven and earth (Uranus and Terra), who is 
queen and mother of these gods ; to her all 
life is due, Zeus himself is the mighty son 
of her womb. Women, therefore, play an 
important role in Grecian mythology. Ac- 
counts of the chaste Artemis and the invul- 
nerable Athena adorn the verse of Homer 
and the drama of ^schylus, the more tender 
note reserved for the celestial goddess, as in 
the appeal of Prometheus : " holy mother 
mine, ethereal heaven circling round the 
light of all things, — ye see what I suffer." 
Adoration of Athena made easy the sacrifice 
of over a ton of gold for the Athena of the 
Parthenon, whose inheritance from Zeus, the 
wielder of the serpent-lightning, fringes her 
segis with snakes, sign of wisdom, and sets 



178 NATURE AND HUMAN NATUEE 

as protecting hound a coiled snake within 
her shield. 

Perhaps one of the most gracious exhibi- 
tions of the sentiment which origmally pre- 
vailed among the Greeks toward womanhood 
is found in the group representing Eirene 
and Plutus, in which the tender turn of the 
head of the mother toward her august child, 
destined to be lord of the realms of the dead, 
is an exliibition of an understandino^ of the 
emotions of motherhood, together with its 
protective care as also prophetic solicitude. 
This sculpture belongs to fourth century 
art : originally a bronze work by Cephisodo- 
tus it was consecrated in Athens in 375.^ 
Plutus, associated with the under-world life, 
was assumed to rule over the fecundity of 
nature arid therefore is presumed to be the 
god of plenty, while his mother is the har- 
binger of an era of peace and plenty, whose 
image is a noble presentation. The robed 
figure of Eirene, in this group, is not more 
expressive of a gracious sentiment ! And 
the inborn reverence for womanhood, pos- 
sessed by the noble sons of women, among 
all nations alike, is not more evident than 

^ Munich. 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 179 

in the statues of Artemis, these suggesting 
personal dignity and intellectual force of 
character. 

As art developed, it is evident, indeed, 
that outward modesty became a sign of in- 
ward chastity, this view the occasion of the 
curious anachronism shown in scidptures re- 
presenting scrupulously clothed women be- 
side the nude figure of man, the sensitive 
ideals of Greece thus a barrier to a sacrifice 
of the good judgment that has made cloth- 
ing a factor in civilization. And here it 
may be said that from present evidences it 
may be concluded that the nude figures ex- 
humed in Greece were temple statues of 
goddesses about whom the sheltering walls 
assumed the office of raiment ; the Venus of 
Melos was designed for a niche in a temple, 
and it may be conjectured that such was the 
place occupied by the Aphrodites of Praxit- 
eles if at the period of their production a 
degenerate spmt had not attacked popular 
ideals. Praxiteles is distinguished for a sur- 
passing skill in images of Aphrodite, his era 
intermediary between that of the culmination 
of art in Greece and its decline. And it is 
noteworthy that on him appears to fall the 



180 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

responsibility of introducing nude statues 
into the temples, his most famous figure, 
the Aphrodite of Cnidus, designed for this 
purpose, an innovation which, disclosing a 
lapse from the custom that had long held 
sway, is of peculiar significance in its rela- 
tions to the succeeding period of decadent 
art. 

In the primary evolution of art, as shown 
in mortuary sculpture and shrine images, 
robed figures are universal, later, demi-robed, 
and finally the Greek's importunate love of 
beauty invaded the sanctuary, overcoming 
the more delicate scruples that are inherent 
to ethical habits of thought. 

The liberal sentiment in Hellenic ideals 
liberated and gave freedom to the Hmbs of 
the historic shrine figure, the arms no longer 
fixed to the body, feet heavily weighted and 
as it were adhering to the earth, play of 
muscle and a daring exhibition of control 
of equilibrium declaring a revolt against im- 
pediments to action, and this accomplished 
there was aroused a desire not only to ideal- 
ize but to reaHze the human form, present- 
ing it as in nature. This ambitious scheme 
entered upon, it is followed by delineations 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 181 

and representations of forces antagonistic to 
the calm trust in the law-in-thing"s, these 
picturing a Nemesis alert to chastise and 
destroy, as for example the Maenads of Sco- 
pas contemporary of Praxiteles. 

The Greek, with all his ideality, a child 
of nature, his gods nature-gods, his worship 
a refined and transfigured animism, if moved 
by an inconsequent hght-heartedness, now 
betrays an occasional loss of hope, his buoy- 
ancy extinguished as happens with a child 
startled in its bHthe irresponsibleness at 
appearance of ill-humor in a parent. The 
great epoch of Greek art was a period of 
hopeful adolescence, but it betrays the ele- 
mental man in process of evolution, the hu- 
man spirit in nascent development. And 
not art alone, but Greek literature is a mu'- 
ror of the play of feeHng common to youth, 
tragedy and comedy equally represented by 
a Sophocles and an Aristophanes, for exam- 
ple, comedy ever following fast on tragedy's 
heels, the sentiment aroused by either tem- 
porary and evanescent. And elemental hu- 
man nature, viewed through the medium of 
Greek literature and art, would almost per- 
suade one to desire a return to an age of 



182 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

evanescent emotion, as do those who prize 
Httle the riches of the years with their 
breadth of experience and that deep feehng 
which is won at the expense of youth. 

But, as suggested, here and there is given 
a disillusioning hint that this youthful, blithe 
aspect of Greek life is not so enviable. 
Earnest comment is hidden in the sculptures 
of the Centaurs where is seen the cool care- 
lessness of a bride in the ruthless power of 
ruffian force, together with the stolid physi- 
cal courage of her rescuer, the Lapith, whose 
face argues a little less undesirable fate to 
the rescued, — for the brute instincts of hu- 
man nature are far in excess of the brutality 
of a beast. 

Sculptures from the temple of Zeus at 
Olympia, and of allegorical meaning, the 
Centaurs bear evidence of studies from real 
life as indisputably as the paintings of Luca 
Signorelli, and their import is of like bearing 
in the evolution of art, for Signorelli was in- 
spired by that sense of realism that precipi- 
tated the degeneracy of ItaHan art, a realism 
which robbed Greek sculptures of their ideal- 
ism, previously shown in temple statues. 
And thus it is an easy transition from a con- 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 183 

sideration o£ these figures (decoration of the 
pediments of the Doric temple of Zeus in 
460 B. c.) to the Pergamean sculptures, par- 
ticularly that of the Dying Gaul ; for the 
Lapith in his encounter with the Centaur is 
bitten upon the shoulder, and his stoHd en- 
durance is as typical of physical courage as 
that shown by the Dying Gaul, who, accord- 
ing to Lord Byron, " consents to death and 
conquers agony," — an interpretation, how- 
ever, suggestive of a moral courage which is 
not discoverable in the face of the Gaul. On 
the contrary, this is an illustration of brute 
endurance, and the face, with death gather- 
ing over its lineaments hke a mist, is unthink- 
ing, unprophetic, and without fear, like that 
of an animal overtaken by unexpected defeat 
when advancing on his antagonist, — so 
indeed might the 'Lapith succumb, as un- 
thinkingly, and with no outcries. 

It is but necessary to recall the unchecked 
cries of Homer's heroes when wounded to 
perceive that this grim endurance was re- 
presentative of conditions antedating the 
sensibilities of human nature existing in the 
poet's age, the purpose of the artist evidently 
to represent elemental hiunan nature and its 
close likeness to that of the animal. 



184 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

From the same school of sculptuarj in 
which the Dying Gaul was produced is that 
phantasmagoria of the battle of the sons of 
earth and the gods of heaven which decorated 
the altar found upon the necropolis of Perga- 
mus. And this battle figures the rebellious 
physical forces in efPort to overcome the 
celestial powers. Designed for a frieze about 
an altar/ it is a powerful illustration of the 
wild, chaotic contention that exists in hu- 
man nature when in a state antagonistic to 
celestial laws, and as there is nothing in the 
history of the epoch that would consistently 
appear to evoke the representation (it being 
the period of Eumenes, Alexander's favorite 
general), it may be regarded as an inspira- 
tion of artistic genius. And if such it may 
be supposed to illustrate the Hellenistic 
period of art when ideals in art were becom- 
ing debased, shrines given up to nude god- 
desses, skilled decoration assuming the func- 
tion of consecrated talent, genre productions, 
with trivial and licentious subjects on every 
hand, in palaces, private dwellings, and sec- 
ular places. 

A subconscious estimate of world-states is 

^ By some called Satan's throne. Rev. xi. 13. 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 185 

common to highly wrought mentahty, and it 
is easy to fancy the dismay of a genuine 
artist at the conditions of art in Greece in 
the second century before our era, and in 
directing his inspirations toward those high 
themes treated in the myths of all countries 
alike, themes descriptive of the fall of man, 
his lower natiu-e conquering, the artist be- 
comes a revelator and prophet. Thus the 
Rhodian sculptors represented the degener- 
ate piety of the times by the Laocoon, and 
the Pergamean sculptures reiterate the theme, 
these representing revolt and consequent war 
between celestial and terrestrial powers, both 
representations suggesting impiety and sacri- 
lege with their consequent punishment. The 
Laocoon, as presented, is a one-act drama, 
the hero a priest who has been guilty of 
sacrilege, and, as if to illustrate the belief in 
a penal power in the sea quoted on another 
page respecting the Indian, the artist has 
portrayed an attack of water snakes upon 
both the priest and his sons, these snakes 
being sent by outraged deity to administer 
punishment. And it is the gleaming, undu- 
lating folds of these snakes whereby the 
sculptor has suggested the gliding stanchless 



186 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

waves of the sea, against whose onward 
movement there is no barrier, the fixidity of 
the marble at the same time testifying to 
the irretrievable misery which contorts the 
face of the priest, the result of whose impiety 
includes the punishment of his sons, heirs 
to his guilt. The great significance of this 
sculpture lies in the fact that at a decadent 
period of art it points to causes that are 
traceable as occasion of that decadence. 

The sensuous seeks to dethrone the super- 
sensuous whence is its own preservation, and 
the consequence of this desire has ever been 
the theme of art. It is, indeed, so universal 
a theme that imagination might portray the 
sculptors of Rhodes or of Pergamus exclaim- 
ino; in the words of Lucretius in reference to 
mythic stories : " miserable race of men, 
when they ascribed such things to the gods, 
and coupled them with bitter wrath I What 
groanings for themselves did they beget, what 
tears for our children's children ! " (v. 1194). 

The gloss of an adroit but superficial ideal- 
ism long covered the decay of the delicate and 
penetrative genius of Greek art, that decay 
occasioned by a sacrifice of truth to beauty, 
of candor to external graces. Truth lies at 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 187 

basis of Hebraic character, as witnessed by 
the impoHtic denunciations of the prophets, 
and it is a bald plainness of expression in 
their scripture that impressed Christian art, 
inspiring the hands of Orcagna, Fra Barto- 
lommeo, and Michael Angelo. Subterfuge, 
indeed, is ineradicably opposed to the funda- 
mental principles of Christianity, and this is 
evident in the sincerity which pervades the 
lives of its most zealous devotees, the Puri- 
tans, for example, whose strenuous love of 
truth inclined them to a pitiless condemna- 
tion of innocent disguises, to whom, indeed, 
beauty was a decoy from that integrity which 
is the result of unswervino; adherence to 
truth, an excess of heedfulness to the latter 
causino" an abrog'ation of the relations be- 
tween truth and beauty established in nature 
and consequently necessary to human nature, 
— there being no ugly truth. But it is evi- 
dent that there is more danger to the pre- 
servation of the human soul through love of 
beauty to the exclusion of truth, than love 
of truth to the exclusion of beauty. Sub- 
terfuges, concealment of actualities, to the 
end of assuaging ruffled sensibilities pro- 
duced in the Hellenes characteristics that 



188 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

were summarized in the phrase, "the wily 
Greeks," — their foes finding it difficult to 
meet so covert an enemy, one who was full 
of strategy and labyrinthine devices. The 
diversity in temperament between the Greek 
and Roman, the one specious, wise, and wily, 
the other du'ect, uncompromising, and heroic, 
explains the otherwise unexplainable efflores- 
cence of Christianity in Rome in advance of 
Athens. And it is in these examples of the 
effect of the genius of diverse people that is 
shown the destiny of individuals with like 
traits — ah uno disce omnes. 

The aesthetic Greek, always heedful of 
sentiment and increasingly enamored with 
beauty, fell away from the regal splendor of 
the Phidian sculptures by a gradual process 
of spiritual degeneracy, truth being necessary 
to the preservation of art, as it is of the soul, 
disintegration following its absence. 

It is this tendency, even in the most per- 
fect examples of Greek art, that denies it 
place in the Christian temple without modifi- 
cations, for however sacred the purpose of 
the image, it falls easily into the position of 
secular adornment. Moreover, it is this de- 
corative quality, discoverable in Greek art 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 189 

by its appropriateness in adornment of secu- 
lar buildings, that betrays its limitations as 
an exponent of the ideals of the human spirit 
at the present epoch, thence the revolt against 
classicism in France, and an effort in Eng- 
land and Germany to revive the sentiment 
of early Christian art as presented in Italy. 
Fervor was needed, and not that which is 
felt by the joy in beauty by itself and sepa- 
rated from its dual truth, the union between 
which produces the good as sunlight and' 
shower produce the flower. 

But the growth of art, as of the human 
spirit, is as opposed to turning back as the 
stem of a tree to return to its roots, and it 
was impossible for even the most zealous 
advocate of Pre-Raphaelism to become a 
Botticelli. 

Modern ideals demand neither Greek nor 
Gothic nor Italian art for expression. This 
is observable in its numerous failures to 
represent the crucifixion. At the period 
when this scene of sacrifice was universal to 
art a pagan element remained in ideas of 
deity, and the act to common thought me- 
morialized the ancient human sacrifice insti- 
tuted to placate the gods, in place of illus- 



190 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

trating an heroic gift of life for truth's sake, 
the moral triumph sulferiug an eclipse by 
means of misinterpretations discreditable to 
human reason. Other misapprehensions also 
enfeebled the expression of art. On one 
hand there was the demand to represent 
divinity, on the other humanity. Thus Ru- 
bens's Christ was conceived in Titanic propor- 
tions, and Diirer's Christ, dehcate and spirit- 
uelle. Rubens's virile presentation, while an 
improvement upon the lymphatic represen- 
tations of an earlier school of j^ainters, is a 
type, however, belonging to tradition. Es- 
caping from the appearance of feebleness, his 
figure is an exaggeration of ascribed power, 
an exaggeration that characterizes Michael 
Angelo's expression of the heroic, which 
defect is observable in this artist's figure of 
the Creator on the ceilino- of the Sistine 
Chapel, this, while structiu'ally accurate, be- 
ing in sentiment a primitive anthropomor- 
phic deity, an image little more adequate 
than some characterizations of Jupiter. And 
Michael Ano-elo's failure here is that which 
befell all artists attempting to portray deity, 
either dying or living. For in humanizmg 
the image of a deity it is necessary to mdi- 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 191 

vidualize, — a momentous task, and which 
m all cases aHke has resulted in giving' 
a predominance to some one characteristic 
rather than fusing all attributes ascribable 
to deity into a whole and so in a concrete 
image representing the absolute and uni- 
versal. And this common failure of expres- 
sion through images of deity, showing art's 
inadequacy, is emphasized as skill developed. 
Believed to have been manifest in Christ, 
and a veritable personality, some preferred 
characteristic unwittingly was chosen by the 
artist whereby to represent the unlimited 
and absolute. 

But if this limitation of expression is evi- 
dent in Christian art, it must be remembered 
that it is a limitation common to imasfina- 
tion, for although remarkable for breadth of 
ideahty, Greek art was incapable of present- 
ing deity without predominance of some 
single characteristic ; the Zeus Otricoli has 
the leonine traits that are sug-ofestive of 
physical force rather than intellectual, this 
characterizing Apollo, thus each image pre- 
sents some special attribute. But together 
with this common limitation in expression 
shown in both Hellenic and Christian art a 



192 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

more comprehensive individualization, in fact, 
was on the eve of development at the period 
when a single attribute seemed to satisfy the 
common conception of an ideal, and this 
among those who attempted an image of 
deity in Christ. But this, if increasingly 
comprehensive, must not be identified with 
Greek breadth ; it was not impersonal. The 
sentiment of the age was opposed, mdeed, to 
an idealism that swept away the personal 
and individual, and for the reason that 
man was becoming- more individual himself. 
Thus it happened that Michael Angelo, 
notwithstandino- his evident admiration for 
Greek art, and his careful study of its prin- 
ciples, manifests little of its pecuHar breadth 
in representation of deity, his strong individ- 
uality forbidding assimilation of that which 
was foreign to its higher development. In- 
deed, suggestive of gi-owth, of testing to 
impatience methods heretofore unapphed, 
Italy's representative artist discloses a ten- 
dency toward scientific pursuits, for do we 
not find him entering the chamber devoted 
to the dissection of the human body, a lamp 
affixed to his cap, while he dissects that 
masterpiece of nature, the latest production 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 193 

of creative energies, so insuring a definite 
knowledge whereby to represent the image 
of man ? But havins^ attained this know- 
ledge, did he produce the ideal of Christian- 
ity? On the contrary, his imagination is 
engaged on other themes, and those in which 
his own masterful individuality was at ease, 
his fervid imagination hurrying him to mul- 
tiply his products as nature increases her 
progeny in the tropics, — this haste, how- 
ever, never compelling him to leave his pro- 
ductions without a well understood response 
from the marble to the inspired chisel ; for, 
i£ incomplete, the virgin mass cloven from 
the mountain side still clinofino" about the 
unreleased figure, his idea was there, Hfting 
itself to sight m all the majesty of inspired 
vision, as in his Night and Dawn, for in- 
stance. And this masterful individuality of 
Michael Angelo's, shown in each new work, 
if the subject were drawn from Scripture, 
the theme, for example, the Last Judgment, 
ever betrayed itself, for it was evident that 
no Raphaelesque sweetness of temperament 
coidd project this tumultuous vision, or body 
forth like passions of human nature, these 
passions evoked by excess of joy or depth of 



194 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

despair. His individuality betrayed in the 
exposition of his theme, it was also disclosed 
in the selection ; hence it might not be anti- 
cipated that he would be able to grasp the 
new ideal, that being Christ. Comprehen- 
sive as was his genius he must fail in this, 
since his temperament partook of the mili- 
tant spirit of Rome, which was in sympathy 
with that of the Israelites, this likeness of 
sentiment obviously destructive to a concept 
of the ideals of the New Era. The ideal de- 
manded by Christianity, indeed, was above 
the apprehension of both the early and late 
masters of art, the most advanced interpret- 
ers, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Titian, 
unable to conceive it in its entirety, each 
artist, on the contrary, controlled by his in- 
dividual point of view, impressing his con- 
ception with his own personality. Thus in 
conformity with these limitations the repre- 
sentations were designated by the artist's 
name, as, for instance, Leonardo's Christ, 
Titian's Christ, Diirer's Christ, Rubens's 
Christ, and the rest, — the personality of the 
artist so far impressed upon the image that 
by common consent it was recognized perma- 
nently in his ideal. But if this is true 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 195 

respecting the personifications that were at- 
tempted, it is of interest to note that in the 
above list a Michael Angelo's Christ does 
not appear, and although it is a list which 
includes the most satisfying representations 
of the time. It is significant that Michael 
Angelo's most beautiful representation is not 
one that may be characterized even as an 
ideal figure of Christ, this being that dead 
lad upon his mother's knees in the chapel 
of St. Peter's, — a figure that no other artist 
could have produced, for only Michael An- 
gelo knew through experimental knowledge 
the full meaning of the helplessness of death, 
this knowledge conveying, however, the real 
meaning of death, — its final release and 
blessing. Thus, if this artist seemed to lack 
power of idealization, if he could not produce 
an ideal as satisfactory as the Olympic Zeus, 
for instance, which delighted the Greek popu- 
lace, — the people, hastening to the temple 
at the news of its completion, traversing long 
distances for the purpose, counting him un- 
fortunate who had not seen the image, — he 
could give a representation which conveyed 
a fact of the greatest importance in consider- 
ation of the tragical end of Christ's ministry : 



196 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

death was a release to Christ, however igno- 
minious. Moreover, the martyr is not al- 
ways he who dies, but he who survives, — a 
point of view to which Michael Angelo has 
given a new sentiment while at the same 
time he has centred the interest on the en- 
during grief of motherhood in loss of a son. 
And it is in this interpretation of the great 
tragedy that Michael Angelo wins the higher 
place among his compatriots in art. He did 
not accept the conventional, but took an in- 
dividual point of view. 

The sacrifice of love is a preeminent char- 
acteristic of motherhood, universal to lower 
and higher animate life, its possibility in- 
herent in bird and beast ; it is the great 
passion whence comes the mingled joy and 
anguish of existence, the anguish when the 
sacrifice is impossible being greater than 
that of death. An anguish which impover- 
ishes life of its sources of interest, it gives 
to the human mother's face that impassive 
expression that Michael Angelo has rendered 
in the face of the Madonna of the Chapel. 
And this dejection suggests that this mother 
was the true martyr, her heart pierced by 
the sword of lasting grief. For this figure, 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 197 

to which the artist has given the expression 
of an irreparable sorrow together with a 
majesty excelling all other representations of 
the mother of Christ, emphasizes the release 
of death contrasted by a life divested of its 
supreme motive. And thus a monument 
suggesting the abiding power of sacrifice 
that exists in motherhood in nature, — for 
what hunter, among even the most ferocious 
of beasts, has not witnessed that power and 
willingness of sacrifice ? — and also a monu- 
ment to motherhood in human nature, this 
representation, like the ecclesiastical apotheo- 
sis of Mary, appeals to all humanity ; — it is 
an example where the demand of the church 
was met by the comprehensive vision of the 
laymen. Moreover, its force of meaning 
shows the prevision of that church, for the 
worship of motherhood is a natural instinct, 
fundamental to all animate life, and a corner- 
stone in an ecclesiastical organization, it pro- 
vides a secure foundation to its universality 
of influence. 

Michael Angelo's genius seemed to be 
under the sway of two influences : at one 
time truth is his inspiration, at another he is 
led by tradition, a semi-pagan element show- 



198 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ing itself, as in the scene of the Last Judg- 
ment, where muscular power is not less en- 
forced than in Assyrian sculptures, or in the 
Pergamean marbles, for example, emphasizing 
the muscle and brawn of that brute force in- 
herited by man, agonies of contrition were 
disclosed by contortions of the body suggest- 
ing physical pain. A literal representation 
of a scene that was calculated to induce fear 
addressed to ^n ignorant mind, it is a note- 
worthy example of a reproduction of bar- 
baric concepts, concepts that strikingly con- 
trast with those which are expressed in the 
Last Judgment of the Egyptian. For in 
that scene there is presented views that 
appeal at once to reason, the dramatis per- 
sonce representative of the truth, an imper- 
sonation of which is presented viewing a 
scale of justice in which the heart of man is 
tested by the weight of truth. And man, a 
judge over himself, sits enthroned bearing 
the badge of truth, while Wisdom takes 
down the record as given by truth. 

And this act occurs in the presence of all 
the gods of light in the Egyptian pantheon, 
these arrayed with their badges of truth 
around the court of trial, so hedging it about 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 199 

and enforcing the fact that the judgment is 
in the light of truth. The locahty is in the 
heavens, as in Michael Angelo's picture, but 
among the stars, these a manifestation of 
those cosmic laws of the universe that de- 
termine planetary regularity and also the 
destiny of man, both stars and man existing 
since truth exists. 

In fact, the Egyptian scene of judgment 
is a representation of the abiding power of 
truth — truth maintains order and perpetuates 
existence — orderliness is godlikeness, with- 
out which is disorganization and chaos. Thus, 
his destiny dependent on orderliness, man's 
acts condemn or justify him, these acts tested 
in the light of truth, the impersonation of 
which bears no evidence of being moved by 
any sentiment except that of dispassionate 
inquiry and in which man is chief judge. 
He alone has empire over his life, as shown 
by his imperial crown and regal badge (that 
of the truth), for " the truth shall make you 
free ! " 

And too great emphasis cannot be laid 
on this judgment scene : illustrating the doc- 
trine of the Egyptian sages, it presented that 
doctrine in an unmistakable form, the redu- 



200 NATURE AND HITMAN NATURE 

plication of the emblem of truth showing 
that this attribute alone is arbiter of the 
soul's destiny. The contrast of this scene 
and that of Michael Angelo's picture of the 
Last Judgment is as great as that between 
the doctrines of the Jews and Egyptians in 
respect to divinity; and the effect of the 
docti'ines of the former, as set forth on the 
ceiling of a Christian church, is made evident 
in the temper of the artist, who has pilloried, 
so to speak, an inimical monk among the 
damned, an unrelenting desire on the part of 
the painter (as in the case of Dante) to have 
vengeance on a foe, and that a lasting ven- 
geance, such as was attributed to deity in 
judgment of the sinner, a concept derived 
from barbaric notions that did not discrimi- 
nate between a persistent moral force and 
the supposable decrees of a vengeful god. 

But Michael Angelo's genius, if at one 
time influenced by tradition, when under the 
sway of distinctly intellectual themes shows 
an unbiased grasp of his subject, as for in- 
stance in his representation of the Hebraic 
bards and prophets, in which his personaliza- 
tion is never at fault. For in the diversity 
of characterization here maintained is seen 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 201 

that careful analysis of the effect of mental 
traits on physiognomy which could be made 
only by one who studied the laws of cause 
and effect and also knew that immediate 
conjunction of spirit and matter, body and 
soul, which is occasion of response of linea- 
ments to personal character, this response 
shown in diversity of faces. But here it 
may be asked, if it was possible to characterize 
the prophets and bards through a process of 
analysis which took into consideration the 
effect of mental traits and the laws whence 
their effect, why might it not be possible to 
characterize Christ, why fail in the image of 
the Christian ideal ? This question can be 
answered only by an understanding of the 
limitations of the painter's genius, a limita- 
tion suggested by Michael Angelo's repre- 
sentation of deity as considered above, this 
a misconception that bears the impress of 
his individual temper, for Michael Angelo's 
ideal was an apotheosis of power, — of a god 
of vengeance. This ideal possessing his 
soul, he was incompetent to represent Christ, 
whose character is illustrated by the doc- 
trines included in the Beatitudes. Michael 
Angelo's genius, indeed, forbade contempla- 



202 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

tion of these doctrines while it prompted 
the study of the prophets and the reproduc- 
tion of those lineaments which betray the 
storm and stress of great intellectuahty to- 
gether with an experience of the persistent 
force of moral law (a law indistinguished 
from the decrees of a god of vengeance). 
For as happens in the history of private in- 
dividuals, the great artist selected as his 
guide that portion of biblical literature which 
suited his temperament, and therefore that 
representation of deity in the picture of the 
creation. 

The Hebraic race, peculiar in power of 
expression through imagery of thought, sup- 
plies no work of plastic art that is a record of 
their ideal, hence the diversity of presenta- 
tion of deity from cover to cover of the Old 
Testament, the growth of intelligence marked 
by change of emphasis on imagined attri- 
bute. For plastic art has a tendency to 
fix the ideal in the mind beyond power of 
development, so hindering both the growth 
and exercise of individual sentiment, a ten- 
dency that was not acceptable to a people 
who were ready to bring their god to judg- 
ment, accusing and cursing him, as did the 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 203 

afflicted Job, and among whom personal di- 
versity of character gave that diversity that 
has made their Hterature the text-hook of 
civilization, a literature in which individual- 
ization is apparent in conception of deity as 
also in every psalm, every lamentation, every 
song of praise, — personal emotion striking 
a chord in the heart by its appeal to per- 
sonal sympathy. 

And this individualization, this apartness, 
this " treading the wine-press alone," this 
creating one's own ideal, — destiny of the 
representative man as also the representative 
race, — marked the Hebraic face, the Saul-like 
violence of feeling ploughed into its linea- 
ments, so to speak, an effect whence there is 
no escape, the body being clay and the soul 
the potter. This peculiarity to genius, the 
representative of his family and his race, is not 
developed in the Egyptian race, for example, 
whose individuality is evasive and slightly 
marked, there being few striking facial lines 
that distinguish one person from another, the 
racial t3rpe common to all disclosing that the 
sino-le individual was an undiversrent inteirer 
of the race correspondingly as the leopard 
is but an integer of its class, its traits undif- 



204 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ferentiated from a stereotyped pattern. A 
homogeneous race, the Egyptian seem to 
have arrived at some final development, 
when, as in the ripeness of age, there is only 
one door, that of the grave, whence to issue 
into renewed activity ; but the Hebraic race, 
tumultuous, impassioned, jealous, with a 
"jealous god," having extended their na- 
tional usefulness through their sacred Htera- 
ture, remain yet a factor to be reckoned 
with. And considered from the standpoint 
where Michael Angelo's interpretation aids 
the judgment, it may be said that it is in 
the evolution of force of individual character 
that its influence is most palpably felt, show- 
ing that individuality is a permeant if a 
limiting attribute when fully developed. 
Furthermore, may it not be said that the 
persistent moral force representatively exem- 
plified in the Hebraic scriptures — this per- 
sistent force forbidding sloth in nature and 
human nature, demanding activity in univer- 
sal life physical and moral — is the strenuous 
current promoting civilization ? The ancient 
Hebrews were dominant egoists, their intelli- 
gence directed to acquisition of power, hence 
their predilection to war and their curious 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 205 

attitude of criticism on neighboring peoples 
whose gods were designated as inferior to 
their god, though both were war-gods ! The 
representative Hebrew of the Old Testament, 
indeed, steeled himself against the neighbor 
with tribal jealousy and this trait occasioned 
hostility toward neighborly charity. His 
god was not his neighbor's, nor was he to 
be shared with him, hence the doctrines of 
Christ were most obnoxious, wounding to a 
deeply seated pride of precedence. Christ 
possessed the Hebrew's force of character, 
and, tenacious of purpose, he was in fact a 
representative scion of this unique race.^ A 
prophet like those most illustrious in a long 
line of j)rophets, he had the fearlessness of 
Isaiah, whose visions seven hundred and 
sixty years before were replete with forcible 
imagery and burning patriotism ; denuncia- 
tory of pride, they depict devastation, fol- 
lowed by renewal, " Jerusalem rejoicing, her 
people a joy." And Christ's language dis- 
closes a conversance with nature, — his 
imagery drawn from natural phenomena as 
was that of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and lastly 
Malachi, whose turgid eloquence breathes 

1 St. John iv. 22. 



206 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of a profoundly stirred spirit besieged with 
hurrying visions, now of violence, then of 
peace. But while like those prophets his 
language is rich in natural imagery, and 
also epigrammatic, his denunciations as fear- 
less and uncompromising, there is a new 
element in his doctrines which was subver- 
sive to the cherished claim of Judaism, this 
the doctrine of the universality of divinity.^ 
Christ's God was the God of humanity, or 
more strictly God in humanity. 

A divergence from the older tribal ex- 
clusiveness, this idea assumed as correct, the 
statement that he and God were one natu- 
rally followed. And Christ announced his 
opinions after the fashion of his forbear, 
David, dogmatically and without appeal to 
other authority than that of his own convic- 
tions. It is in this method that may be dis- 
covered the bitter hate which he evoked. A 
reformer, he did not abate his breath, but 
denounced a culprit with biting sarcasm, 
taking his similes from examples provided 
by nature as had the prophets of old, so 
insuring their unquestionable force of mean- 
ing. Never tentative in speech, but always 

1 St. John iv. 24; xiv. 20. 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 207 

trenchant, his parables were as apt as they 
were admirable. And identifying himself with 
the principle of truth, he maintained the 
attitude of one with authority, practicing no 
abasement but holding himself as sovereign 
by right of a surpassing wisdom. 

Reannouncing doctrines that had previ- 
ously been promulgated, his energetic exem- 
plification of these doctrines in applying 
them in ministry to the needy was original, 
as is perceived by comparison with Buddha, 
whose doctrines contain some of the tenets 
taught by Christ. For while the ministry 
of both incited purity of conduct and gave 
evidence of desire to ameliorate the condi- 
tions of the suffering, compassion on the 
part of one prompted recoil from the sight 
of sorrow, while of the other it demanded 
aid and self-sacrifice ; the former affording 
calm enjoyment and a prolonged life, the 
latter a brief life and tragical death. Fur- 
thermore, Buddha systematically practiced 
self-effacement, but Christ waited on self- 
development and in maturity of manhood 
entered on an energetic ministry, the impe- 
rialistic power of which suggests the culminat- 
ing strength of that persistent moral force 



208 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

which had come down an inheritance from 
the inspired representative men of his race. 

Self-effacement is unnatural and contrary 
to the action of the law of that development 
which is shown in the lower animate world, 
a law that bids the plant fuse its characteris- 
tics in the flower, product of self-emphasis 
through self -development. Representative 
men are the flowers of the race, as also of 
their family, and they are products of self- 
development, not self-effacement. Is it not 
the exercise of individual force of character 
that is at base of all advancement ? 

Christ, if he dreamed, also lived ! He 
was conscious within himself of that energy 
which permeates the universe, rehabilitating 
as also creating. Actualizing his tenets, 
he claimed the Truth, the Way, the Life, 
and his zeal transmitted, his followers also 
imbibed the truth, finding the way. The 
truth demands the exercise of personal will ; 
bestowing self-reliance, it determines the 
character. Moreover, the greater the will 
the greater the character, — so evident is 
this, it is a metaphor of speech when speak- 
ing of a representative man in exercise of 
his powers against obstacles, " He has an 
iron will ! " 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 209 

The application of the will develops indi- 
viduality ; Christ is an example of an un- 
bending will, and therefore his marvelous 
personahty surpassing that of the saintly 
Buddha, who atrophied his will by subjec- 
tion to a vagary, that being the belief that 
happiness lies in an unlaborious resignation, 
a belief that is an insidious disintegrant to 
individual force, and which acted upon by 
plant, animal, or man would compass their 
ultimate ruin. 

The truth is a form-maker, as may be 
seen by its influence upon the lineaments of 
the human face, these becoming decisive and 
firm, whereas, in the absence of truth, those 
lineaments lapse, becoming shifty and weak. 
The exercise of the will founded on truth 
has filled the pages of liistory with annals 
of thrilling heroism, and it is through these 
annals representative men are recognized in 
their true character, true of representative 
men, true of the Christ. We know him by 
his deeds! And througch these the artists 
finally sought to present the Christian ideal, 
failino; in traditional methods. 

It is this method which skives to the works 
of Titian and others of his period their last- 



210 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ing interest. But it was left to a modern 
artist to carry out this method to a complete 
demonstration of the life of Christ and its 
purpose. This artist (M. Tissot) has given 
more prominence to the life than to the 
figure of Christ, for although not failing in 
its presentation with due regard to its promi- 
nence as an indication of the majestic power 
within, it is evident that interest is invoked 
upon what Christ did rather than how he 
looked. But no eye can he indifferent to 
the portrait at the beginning of the illustra- 
tions presenting his career, it being as indi- 
vidual as are the series of portraits of the 
prophets by Michael Angelo, for the moral 
fibre, so to speak, of the race represented in 
Michael Angelo' s work is also represented by 
M. Tissot. The lineaments of this face, in- 
deed, is the Hebraic physiognomy idealized, 
it being neither aesthetic and pagan, nor 
Italianesque, but individual while racial ; ex- 
pressive of an inexorable will as also inex- 
haustible compassion, it is suggestive of 
strensi'th and tenderness. 

And to return to this portrait after view- 
ing the scenes of Christ's ministry is to dis- 
cover that it is the keynote of the strenuous 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 211 

chords struck in tlie various acts. It is evi- 
dent, indeed, that these scenes, matchless in 
their evidence of a penetration of character 
and depth of tenderness, were possible only 
to the life of one whose eyes have just such 
steadfastness, whose brow is marked with the 
same evidence of thought, and whose mouth 
is closed with like firmness. 

This striking individualism in the person 
of Christ, which the portrait of Tissot has 
so ably represented, is indeed the new ideal, 
for it impersonates a persistent moral force 
— a creative, humane power, ennobling man- 
kind — humanizing the animal, divinizing 
men. 

What Tissot accomplished with such dis- 
crimination and force in this portrait of 
Christ prepares the mind for two remarkable 
scenes in the life, these showing both re- 
sourceful imagination and judicious reserve. 
The first of these is taken from the parable 
of the blind. In this picture every face tells 
a story of helplessness, the grojjing hands or 
those clutching at a neighbor bearing witness 
to the sightless eyes, while as if linked to- 
gether by a galley chain the blind men wend 
through the wood, the foremost bent, and 



212 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

with hands impotent and gropingly thrust 
out, followed by those behind, their common 
woe their chain. 

An example of realism in art, there is 
none the less an appeal to imagination which 
demands that the sightless physical eyes 
should but figure the unseeing spirit of the 
children of men, and thus the artist, if in- 
spired by Maeterlinck's drama of " The Blind," 
has given a profounder pathos to this the 
great tragedy among human woes by sug- 
gesting one even greater, that extinguishing 
the light of the soul. 

The contrast between these hnked figfures 
in helpless insecurity and those who have 
linked their hands in the last communion — 
disciples and Master — is a fitting illustra- 
tion of the opposite condition of blindness 
and vision which is the common experience 
of human nature at various stages of life. 

And it is in this picture is intimated the 
supreme force of Christ's magnetic personal- 
ity, a personality distinguished for its origi- 
nality if marked by racial traits, and so far 
surpassing the experience of human nature 
that its image has eluded all artistic pre- 
sentation from the dawn of Christianity to 



BLINDNESS AND VISION 213 

the present epoch. And now its presenta- 
tion is a return to the method adopted wit- 
tingly by Egypt, and unwittingly by the 
Greeks, this being the idealized physiognomy 
of the race whence sprang the personage re- 
presented ! 

Between the covers of the Old and New 
Testaments is traced the lineaments of Christ, 
and his face is delineated in his hfe as the 
face of God is mirrored in natural pheno- 
mena. 



VII 

NATURAL IMAGERY 

Observation of the traits of birds appears 
to have been the foundation of the language 
used by Egyptian scribes. So numerous, 
indeed, are the figures of birds on monu- 
ment and papyrus Herodotus was justified in 
denominating these hieroglyphics " a bird- 
language." And, as in ancient Egypt, birds 
have ever been used as a means of expression 
of thought, the species selected becoming a 
type of national or religious sentiment. The 
eagle, for example, is seldom absent from 
figures of speech when undaunted courage is 
the theme ; but it is noteworthy that while 
an acknowledged symbol of courage, that 
courage is not a moral sentiment, and it is 
this heed to the character of the bird that 
may be taken as an example of the nicety of 
choice common to natural imagery. The 
eagle is indeed a representative type of 
unscrupulous valiancy. He has a habit of 



NATURAL IMAGERY 215 

gaining his ends by means that are little 
short of arrant dishonesty. If he discovers 
a kingfisher hovering over a lake, he rises 
swiftly beyond sight and awaits, in apparent 
indifference, circling in the dim ether; but 
on the instant that the fisher plunges upon 
its smooth gliding prey he drops like a 
thunderbolt, seizing the prize from the fish- 
er's beak amid well deserved maledictions 
screamed forth by his escaping and unwilling 
peon. This form of courage is instinct 
with self-love, presenting the brutal side o£ 
animal life, and as an emblem in a figure of 
speech or national escutcheon this meaning 
is covertly conveyed, the selection an evi- 
dence of the easy acceptance of that exam- 
ple in nature which illustrates the predatory 
instincts of human nature. 

Like the hawk, the eagle seeks living prey, 
but unlike that bird it cannot be reduced to 
even comparative subjection, for a wounded 
bird, helpless but for care of keeper, will 
seize and tear the hand that offers it a 
caress. The contrast between the eagfle's 
disposition and that of the dove — both used 
as a means of expression in symbolism ^ — 

^ That the dove, known in ecclesiastical symbolism as an 



216 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is marked by their diverse attitude towards 
man, for the one if not actually inimical is un- 
approachable, the other builds its nest even 
in proximity to human habitation and by this 
supreme surrender shows a confidence and 
amiability that is by no means displayed by 
the eagle, who, on the contrary, builds its 
nest far away from human habitation, having 
neither confidence in nor likino; for mankind. 
And this nest is no dainty covert ; brutal in 
its habits, the eagle is without sense of 
beauty, and therefore the structureless pile 
of sticks arranged only with due regard for 
the safety of the twin eaglets, while the place 
of the nest is as clear an indication of the 
exclusive nature of the eagle as its avoid- 
ance of the habitations of men, this usually 
being in some barren district high up on an 
inaccessible side of a mountain amid bristling 
furze, the shaggy growth common to tem- 

emblem of the Holy Ghost, had some prehistoric meaning 
is evident, since in a scene pictured upon a plaque found 
at Rhodes where the combat between Menelaus and Hector 
is represented, a figure of this bird is a conspicuous object 
on the shield of the latter. And it will be remembered 
that the dove was associated with the Argonauts, the direc- 
tion of its flight a guide to the course pursued in search of 
the Golden Fleece. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 217 

pest-breeding regions. Here, nourished at 
the fountain-head of ehainless winds, the 
offspring develop those traits of ferocity 
that appall the worshiper in nature's temple. 
And the eaglet's is a slow growth, extending 
over a period of three years, so tasking, al- 
though never exhausting, that patience which 
is characteristic of parental instinct, a pre- 
scient instinct which commands continuity of 
species in plant, bird, or man. But even 
the eagle has its play hour, as is the case 
with all birds and animals, their recreations 
occurring at dawn or evening, and as the sun 
rises or sets the pair may be observed soaring 
above the scene of their labors, rising higher 
and higher in the azure vault where they 
swing without throb of wing, secure and in- 
accessible as the planets are. From these 
habits, and a dauntless as also ferocious 
courage, the eagle was adopted as an emblem 
of Zeus and Jupiter, these gods ideals of 
virile physical force. And thus an emblem 
of ruHng power it became a sign of national 
puissance, whence its use by warlike nations. 
But universal as this application of the em- 
blem, there is a rare exception, and that 
among a barbaric people. The Pueblo In- 



218 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

dians captured the young and nourished 
them for the purpose of obtaining the downy- 
feathers so remarkable for their delicacy of 
structure, these to be used in ceremonials as a 
vehicle of supplication and to represent the 
" soul's body," ^ a custom suggesting the use 
of the ostrich's plumes among the Egyptians 
for the purpose of representing an attribute, 
that of truth, this attribute deified, and 
denominated the god of truth. Thus, de- 
scription failing in the effort to present the 
idea of a soul embodied, as also to express 
the preeminence of truth, these two peoples 
resorted to natural imagery, an imagery that 
in being drawn from a similar object discloses 
the peculiar tendency of their minds. More- 
over, it is apparent that that tendency is dis- 
similar to that of the Greeks and Romans, a 
fact that is more and more marked, particu- 
larly when the motive of Egyptian and Greek 
symbolism is analyzed. 

Egyptian symbolism is introspective, for 
symbols were used to express human and 
divine attributes and principles, which are 
in fact those forces on which form depends. 
And thus the images applied in the scrip- 

^ Report of Hemenway Expedition. Dr. Fewkes. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 219 

tures of Egypt lead at once to the contem- 
plation of the cause and relation of things. 
Greek art, exponent of the Greek mind, 
testifies a less intimate association with the 
principle omnipresent in nature, — that prin- 
ciple the immanent psychic force and motor 
of natural phenomena, — dealing rather with 
the externalities ; being increasingly infatu- 
ated with the visible and tangible pheno- 
mena of life, its application of imagery drawn 
from nature is seldom abstruse but directed 
to the easy interpretation of common under- 
standing. This is particularly true when 
archaic art gave way to that final expression 
of Greek genius in the Periclean Age (400- 
500 B. c). It is at this period and the suc- 
ceeding decline of virility in Greek art that 
the eagle symbol assigned to Zeus is used 
more especially to commemorate success in 
war. 

Assumed as the palladium of the Athena 
of the Parthenon, its wings rising from the 
shoulders of an image of Victory, it is a sig- 
nificant illustration of the meaning attached 
to the symbol when that statue of Athena 
stood like a tower of defense upon the apex 
of the temple. As it was employed as a 



220 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

signal of power in the accoutrement of 
Athena, so was it used in the sculpture by 
Pseonius, a votive offering of the Messenians 
for successes gained in war, this image of 
Victory, seemingly borne up by an eagle, 
being a goddess of Zeus's court whose ap- 
parent descent from heaven is as light as that 
of the eagle when swooping down upon its 
prey. But this figure gives little of that 
eager rush when the prey is a disputed posses- 
sion, as shown in the Victory of Samothrace,^ 
so called, and believed to be commemorative 
of a naval battle between Demetrius and 
Ptolemy (306), the success of the former de- 
manding a votive offering. 

The application of the eagle emblem in 
these sculptures is similar to that in the re- 
presentations of Zeus, the purpose being an 
expression of supreme power. Furthermore, 
the emblem of a sovereign divinity, it is safe 
to say, is an exponent of the sentiment of the 
people, — it betrays their notion of the most 
admirable attribute ascribable to supreme 
power. 

The two employments of the Greek people, 
to the exclusion of nearly all others, were war 

* Louvre, Paris. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 221 

and games. Their life was an unmeditative 
life, the externals occupying their attention, 
whence the palpable diiference in appHcation 
of the traditional symbol of the eagle and 
that of the unwarlike and obscure Pueblo 
Indians who developed an introspective tone 
in their mythology, — a tone which is pecul- 
iarly oriental and suggestive of the mytliic 
ideas of the early Buddhists as also the phi- 
losophy of the priests of Sais. 

The emblem of divinity in India is a 
flower, a hly having an undisputed ascen- 
dency in the symbolism used in Buddhistic 
art and literature. But this is not so in 
Egypt, the same flower, applied to decorative 
art and used to identify goddess from god, 
is subordinated to the hawk as a means of 
more comprehensive illustration. The hawk 
indeed is Egypt's most conspicuous bu'd 
emblem ; it was carried by the devastating 
Egyptian army into foreign lands as a palla- 
dium, and if it died during the expedition the 
body was returned for sepulchre among the 
bodies of the kings of Egypt, itself embalmed 
with equal sohcitude. 

Symbol of vahancy, the hawk became an 
emblem of the soul triumphant m death; so 



222 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

consecrated it was delineated upon the mon- 
uments of the kmgs, there dignified by the 
title of the " Soul-name," — a title explana- 
tory of the fact that the king had joined the 
suite of Horus, the so-called Hawk god, — 
that is, the god of dawn. 

Horus, as the god of dawn, was the lord 
of resurrection, that is, an impersonation of 
perpetuity of being, and all representations 
of him are remarkable for delicacy of ex- 
pression ; as the mythic Dawn Child he is 
represented rising from a lotus flower, these 
representations, poetic and refined, suggest- 
ing- that some other attribute was ascribed to 
the hawk than that which its best known traits 
would indicate, and it is not without signifi- 
cance that Africa may claim a most unique 
specimen of the hawk species {Melheirax 
onusicus), this hawk possessing a song that is 
melodious and delicate, and as this song marks 
the dawn and setting sun it is not unlikely 
that the musical hawk was the particular 
species whence was selected an emblem for 
Horus, using it also for a descriptive name 
to be applied to the soul. 

Power of description failing among primi- 
tive men some bird was commonly used to 



NATURAL IMAGERY 223 

express ideas of the liumaii spirit, but seldom 
were they of the predaceous families, — the 
dove, for example, was set free over the grave 
of the dead by the Huron Indian, so presum- 
ably giving wing to the escaping soul. And 
in consequence of a too rigorous fast it was 
claimed by another tribe of Indians that 
a lad's soul took on the shape of a robin and 
thus flew away. But these examples might 
be multiplied, the selection always of an ami- 
able bird, wherefore it may be assumed that 
Egypt selected the more amiable and attrac- 
tive species of the hawk family, this a 
singer, and consequently a marvel among its 
tribe, especially since the bird was designed 
to represent immortal life together with the 
god of dawn (Horus). A conclusion that 
is safe even though song, as plumage and 
color, did not dictate the selection of birds 
for expression of ideas and beliefs in Egyp- 
tian text, habits being more typical of char- 
acter directing their consecration. This is 
notably apparent in the use of the hawk's 
eye to represent contemplation, a selection 
induced, it is likely, from the steady gaze 
and contemplative mien of the hawk on 
perch, a representation of which attitude is 



224 NATURE AND HUMAN NATUEE 

indeed of frequent occurrence in Egyptian 
writing". 

The contemplative mien of the hawk is 
greatly emphasized by its remarkable stillness 
on perch when its long wings seem to inclose 
it as a mantle while its eyes are steadily re- 
gardful of what occurs in the field of vision, 
— this attitude accented if the bird is en- 
gaged in instructing a fledgeling, for the 
younger bird imitates the elder in the repose 
of his attitude, and both have the appearance 
of profound meditation in comparison to 
which the owl's meditativeness is poor mim- 
icry. 

The different species of the hawk pro- 
vided the Egyptian symbolist with represen- 
tation of prowess in war, gentle dehght, and 
contemplation, and if, as it is likely, there 
was some primitive totemic sacredness at- 
tached to the emblem, this heritage did not 
bear heavily upon advancing intelligence, 
since the species provided such breadth of 
application. 

Many criticisms were made among the 
Greeks as to the adaptability of certain 
birds and animals for expression of ideas so 
set forth, but the most advanced critics vis- 



NATURAL IMAGERY 225 

iting the Delta of the Nile, as Phsedo claims, 
coming with a spii-it of disdain forgot to 
ridicule when explanations were given. 

This result it is probable followed the gen- 
eral ridicule of the selection of the vulture 
to represent divine maternity, this including 
the rebirth of the human soul, — for when 
considered as a type of that force which 
creates living substances out of dead matter, 
assuming the bird's power to assimilate dead 
prey an example of that force, the emblem 
is appropriate enough. 

The vulture's breadth of wing adapted 
itself to decorative art very effectively, and 
upon the ceilings of the temples of Egypt are 
the first examples of wing decorations so used. 

In the text of Egyptian scripture this bird 
is seen together with the hawk ; here also a 
large number of aquatic birds, the " Walkers," 
and the " Chick," the eggs, as also unfledged 
birds within a nest, some occult meaning 
given to their number, that being three, to 
which emphasis was given later by a picture 
of three birds walking abreast, this a contin- 
uance of the description of the soul's state 
in course of development, for it must be re- 
membered that according to Egyptian belief 



226 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the soul at the time of death is not in a 
developed state more than is the chick in the 
new-laid egg. 

But it is evident that it is quite impossible 
to reahze the force of these illustrations un- 
less an actual acquaintance is made with the 
birds and animals of Egyptian scripture; this 
acquired, however, amazement at the aptness 
of the analogy inclines one to reconsider opin- 
ions condemnatory of the methods used, as in 
the case of the Greek critic. And indeed to 
condemn the method is to cast censure upon 
all speech respecting matters appertaining to 
the problem of perpetuity of human existence 
since this has been treated by analogy uni- 
versally and through a more or less famil- 
iarity with the phenomena of nature, — a 
familiarity that, exciting the imagination, is 
quite likely to bring nature and human nature 
so into touch that at last it becomes evident 
that form is but an outward show of which 
the principle of life is the occasion, a con- 
clusion that the metamorphoses of insects 
darkly hints at, and whose surprising routine 
of transformation gave the sages of Egypt 
their special type of the evolution and devel- 
opment of human life after death. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 227 

Assuming the habits of the burial beetle 
as a type, this beetle, digging a shaft in the 
earth and there depositing her eggs together 
with necessary nourishment, the Egyptian 
also digs a shaft at the base of which he 
buried his dead, food offering not omitted, 
and carrying out the mimicry into details he 
substituted for the heart extracted in em- 
balmment an image of the beetle in precious 
stone, thus suggesting that the dead, if 
buried, returned to life, the body perishing 
as does the beetle after depositing its eggs. 

The swallow was associated with the de- 
parture of the dead, by the Egyptians, and 
is pictured upon a " solar barge " bearing 
the immortals to the regions where man's 
life is renewed, these regions called the 
Field of Aaru. And it is not a difficult sym- 
bol to modern imagery, for the swallow is as 
little confined to the earth as a spirit, its 
structure even denying it little foothold, the 
air its native element as to the hummino^- 
bird, that Ariel of swift departures. And 
the swallow's careering in pursuit of quarry 
is full of exhilarating dash and emphasis, 
wheeling like a meteor, now seen and then 
unseen, to at length vanish in the blue. As 



228 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is the case with the human spirit, the swal- 
low's incubation is in a nest of clay, this 
material gathered by the little nest-mates 
with a dainty regard to soil of feather, all 
defiling contact prevented by means of high- 
Hfted tail-feathers and balancing wing tip to 
tip above a rounded back, whose strain of 
muscle in process of dig of neb occasions 
a vibrant tremulousness extending to the 
toes tattooing in the moist mud, — marks of 
which revealed at flight of the tiny labor- 
ers suggest the delicate tracery of a wind- 
tossed fern upon the sand. 

All energy, a pinch of feathers, the merest 
apology of a body, winged, with eyes alit by 
an electric glow, how more accurately image 
the mysterious human entity, the fiery par- 
ticle of life, a human soul escaping earth to 
vanish in ether? Here indeed is a con- 
crete image of the soul more satisfactory 
than that of a parcel of flame, the nucleus of 
a solar body, which was sometimes used by 
the Egyptian sages, although without an 
equally strict analysis, an analysis that con- 
stantly points out the unformed state of the 
soul at period of death, and in which it was 
necessary to present the idea of growth, of 



NATURAL IMAGERY 229 

"becoming/' to use Goethe's expressive term, 
this idea repeatedly enforced disclosing that 
these sages were evolutionists, applying their 
theory, however, to psychic rather than phy- 
siologfical conditions. 

It is noticeable that a large number of 
the birds chosen to represent the Egyptian 
drama of the resurrection are walkers, as, 
for instance, the ostrich, heron, and goose, 
while the birds of the air are remarkable 
for dash of movement and ready turn, their 
avoidance of obstacles so secure and auda- 
cious a witness is likely to aver their flight 
is not around but through them, as the red 
man claimed was the flight of souls. 

The swaUow's movements are marked by 
grace and swing, an andante followed by a 
scherzo, that marks an epoch in the soul's 
state prior to and on entrance into the Field 
of Aaru. But another bird is selected to 
represent a more advanced state : that bird 
is the lapwing; and for headlong ecstasy in 
motion for motion's sake no bird surpasses 
this inhabitant of the shore, and as to this 
characteristic may be added a flutelike voice 
it may well challenge the swallow for su- 
premacy in expression of the bewildering 



230 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

joy attendant on escape from terrestrial cap- 
tivity. Wheeling, turning on itself — a 
dash, a sudden somersault and recovery, a 
drop upon the sands and a race — a pause, 
and lastly a flash of disappearing wings, this 
bird presents a magical vision of self-organ- 
ized motion. Amiable, uncombative, attached 
to its companions as if bound to them by the 
" sweet influences of the Pleiades," their 
movements his, their down fluttering and up- 
rising precisely followed, what better exam- 
ple of mutuality of feeling? Furthermore, 
what more attractive illustration of a bevy 
of spirits arisen out of an ecli23se of light into 
full day ? 

As has been suggested the Egyptian sage, 
directed by the phenomena of life, did not 
confine his illustrations to the attractive 
and gentle of disposition. And this will be 
appreciated by one who has experienced the 
rapacity of the hawk in loss of a song bird 
or witnessed the force of a blow from an 
ostrich's foot — that bird whose plume was 
a distinctive symbol of the gods of resurrec- 
tion, the ever-present gods of light. Seeking 
to emphasize conditions, to represent state 
and power of locomotion, swiftness the ulti- 



NATURAL IMAGERY 231 

niatum (for all resurrected spirits are fleet as 
a sunbeam !), it followed that kindly disposi- 
tion was seldom weighed. 

It is only by inference that the dove is 
suspected to have been expressive of some 
feature of the phenomena of the soul's state, 
this bird seen alone in rituaHstic illustrations, 
but the goose was a sacred bird in Egypt, 
dedicated to the sun ; it was she who laid 
the golden egg, theme of ancient story, — a 
story which among the flotsam and jetsam 
of vagrant myths fared iU since it does not 
perpetuate the abstruse meaning that it pos- 
sessed in Egyptian imagery, a meaning that 
may be discovered through a knowledge of 
the peculiar traits of the goose, these traits 
disclosed in its intercourse with man, the 
goose testifying special regard for its keeper, 
tenderness even, as in the well known inci- 
dent of the blind woman who was led about 
by her pet goose, taken to and from church, 
and on neighborly visits, and this done with 
the apparent solicitude of a St. Bernard, — 
that honest friend of the helpless and un- 
protected. But while a goose gives evidence 
to strong attachment for its keeper, at the 
trumpet call of the wild goose leading a mi- 



232 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

gration, it will forsake its home and be seen 
no more until the breeding season is past. 
Obedient to the migratory instinct to a de- 
gree that is not found among other domes- 
ticated birds and possessing an affectionate 
nature, it was well suited to its important role 
in Eg3rptian imagery, that being the emblem 
of the sun, giver of good to the children of 
men.^ The goose, in fact, represented love, 
and an analogy was found between the sun 
and the bii-d even in the latter's obedience 
to a migratory instinct, for does not the sun 
journey north in simimer moved by a hidden 
and inexpHcable force ? 

Egyptian bird symbolism either illustrated 
the resurrection of the human spirit and its 
successive states, its development out of a 
nascent condition such as that of the chick in 
the eo-or into adolescence and the full-fledg'ed 
bird, the latter state's appropriate image ; or 
this symbolism is an interpretation of the 
Absolute, the principle of life. And it is 
the latter office that the symbol of the goose 
occupies, for the sacred goose in Egyptian 

•^ It is the goose, according to the ancient story, which 
gives birth to the sun, the " golden egg," at the period 
of her migration. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 233 

scripture typifies, as its character indicates, 
love, — love not alone of offspring, common 
to bird species, but love of man. This love 
is not a mere procreative force ; it is protec- 
tive and without possible imputation of self- 
love as in the case of love of animals for 
their young. It has the quality ascribable, 
in fact, to divine love, the principle whence is 
the good in the universe as also the true 
and beautifid, bestowed as the sun bestows 
its light, out of its abundant resources. 

There is an attractive sculpture in the 
Capitoline Museum, Rome, of a Httle lad 
in joyous play with a goose, his arms about 
the bird's neck and the amiable bird appar- 
ently responding with a characteristic note 
to the smiling face it contemplates. The 
affectionate temper of this bird is further 
emphasized in Greek art by a representation * 
of Aphrodite borne through the air by a 
goose, — the relations of the queen of love 
and her bearer evidently of mutual under- 
standing, a remarkable likeness of expression 
in their faces, the joyous anticipation shown 
by a buoyancy in the pose of both figures 
suggesting a pleasurable encounter with the 
bracing air. 

' London, British Museum. 



234 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

It is this movement, so difficult to describe, 
that is characteristic of all Greek sculpture 
of animal life, and which is represented in 
the vigorous and imperious movement which 
characterizes the horses of the Phidian sculp- 
tures, particularly the heads of the chariot 
horses on the Parthenon frieze,^ this move- 
ment calculated to emphasize the contrast- 
ing calm serenity of the gods. A marvel 
in illustration of the headlong plunging 
force, the inconsequent rush of the startled 
animal, this example of the results of study 
from nature shows the immediate compan- 
ionship with these high-spirited brothers of 
men that obtained in those early days when 
the door of the dwelling permitted ingress 
to both steed and rider. Furthermore, each 
representation, that of the painting and the 
sculpture, is typical of the peculiar delicacy 
and vividness of imagination which gives 
that special magic to Greek art. 

In the painting. Aphrodite and the goose 
appear to be a transcript of the Egyptian 
dedication of this bird to divinity, but this 
people's grave apotheosis has lost its ponder- 
ous weight of sentiment and become a grace- 

^ Loudon, British Museum. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 235 

ful simile, a jleur cVeau, so to speak. The 
goddess is portrayed in modest raiment, 
her air of expectancy virginal and not too 
eager, a very human Aphrodite, and not the 
august impersonation which would have been 
the truer rendering of the Egyptian idea. 
A work of the Periclean age, there is the 
gayety which loosened the bonds of archa- 
ism especially shown in Mycenaean sculp- 
tures, a gayety that finally helped to precip- 
itate the decline of that relisfious feelinof 
which characterized the art productions of 
this period, — a sympathy with which may 
be ascribed to Pindar, the Dorian, and who, 
since of the same period, might well be re- 
garded as an exponent of the attitude in 
which sculptors of the Phidian school stud- 
ied nature, the poet in verse with remarka- 
bly graphic description presenting real life 
as did the sculptor through marble. 

It is evident that Phidias demanded both 
lofty sentiment and accuracy of drawing when 
his theme was natural life, and hence that 
startling awakening to life in sculptures de- 
voted to representation of animals. 

The Parthenon sculptures of animal life, 
limited to that of the most intelligent species 



236 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

and those typical of a highly wrought ner- 
vous temperament, is an example of the 
Greek's appreciation of the force of expres- 
sion possible to lower animate life, — and it 
is noteworthy that at the period when the 
horses of the Parthenon frieze were produced 
Micon (475 b. c.) won high distinction by 
his pictures of the same animal. And here 
may be mentioned Protogenes, a contempo- 
rary of Apelles (350 b. c), being so far as 
known Greece's only famous animal painter. 
Of Protogenes it is stated that on finding 
that through the exquisite accuracy of his 
delineation of a quail in a picture of a re- 
posing satyr holding a flute in his hand, 
little notice was taken of the subject, all 
attention being directed to the bird, jealous 
of his theme the quail was effaced in a 
moment of wrath. Protos^enes was a most 
painstaking artist, his famous picture, laly- 
sus and his Dog, was only completed after 
seven years carefid study. The ambition 
of Protogenes that his representation of the 
dog should be accurate is evident in the 
anecdote that, dissatisfied and in a fit of ill 
temper, he threw a sponge at the picture of 
the dog's head, which giving the appearance 



NATURAL IMAGERY 237 

of foam in the mouth of the clog accom- 
plished the effect desired. An incident show- 
ing the feeling of an artist in respect to his 
work, it also shows the Greek's aspiration 
for perfection in artistic expression. But 
love of art not only possessed the artist's 
soul, it appears in the life of the whole 
people as is testified in the history of this 
very picture, for when Demetrius besieged 
the city of Rhodes, where the picture was 
preserved, in 304 b. c, he respected that part 
of the city lest the picture be destroyed. 

The degree of perfection with which figures 
of animals was delineated by the prehistoric 
artists of Greece is shown in a fragment of 
fresco painting from Tiryns ; but here, it 
should be observed, the work is of mythical 
purport, and, from evidences satisfactory to 
the student of Egyptian symbolism, is repre- 
sentative of astrological phenomena : illus- 
trating the energetic on-coming of a bull, 
the symbolic spots marking the body, together 
with pose, imply the ascendency of the con- 
stellation of Taurus. Showing the exten- 
sion of Egyptian influence into prehistoric 
Greece, this painting also shows how the 
Greek spirit enlarged upon Egyptian imagery. 



238 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Perhaps one of the most perfect examples 
of the skill of the Mjcensean artist is shown 
in the drawing of cattle, an example of which 
is given in the repousse work on the famous 
gold cups found in a beehive tomb at Paphis, 
Laconia. The subject is a bull-hunt which 
ends in subjecting the animals. Here is the 
on-rush of flight ; the one method of dealing 
with a foe, — an application of the horns ; 
a toss, and a stampede ; here also is the bull 
ensnared in a net. On the obverse side there 
is the untamed but safely secured prisoner, 
whose temper shows itself in a vicious kick 
at his keeper ; this succeeded by a most 
amiable pair coquetting together and behind 
whom stands a ruminating fellow as gentle 
as a Rosa Bonheur ox. It is in these pictures, 
frescoes, and repousse work that is found the 
Greek of Greek lyrics of the time of Ibykus 
and Alkman of Sardis, these poets showing 
appreciation of animate life, — of birds and 
flowers. 

The Greeks evidently had an intelligent 
appreciation of animals, but this appreciation 
is not marked by tenderness. Greek art 
portrays the mettlesome energy of the horse, 
the bovine force of the irascible bull, and if 



NATURAL IMAGERY 239 

we may trust to the description of Protoge- 
nes's picture, the quivering eagerness, the 
rashness, and over-heated inconsequence of 
the doo-. 

But where is exhibited the amiable ten- 
derness assumed by the Orientals? An ex- 
ception to this general tenor is only to be 
found in the sculpture above described, that 
of the goose and the boy, and this indeed is 
a parody suggesting humor on the part of 
the artist, the difficulty of the little four or 
five years old lad in maintaining himself 
erect while embracing the ardent goose ab- 
surd beyond all description ; a sculpture in- 
deed that suggests the gayety of a people 
among whom awe for the gods had so far 
decreased that they were fancied to be over- 
come with irrepressible laughter at limp of 
aspirant to the queen of love's favor. 

But if animals were resfarded in some 
measure as buffoon playfellows and httle 
tenderness was exercised toward them, to 
judge from these sculptures, there is no mark 
of cruelty such as is shown, for example, in 
the Assyrian sculptures representing hunting 
scenes. It would be impossible, indeed, for 
the artistic sensitiveness of the Greek — this 



240 NATURE AND HUI^IAN NATURE 

precluding portrayal of suffering in the 
drama — to have produced that sculpture of 
the wounded Lioness found in Asshur-bani- 
pal's palace, and now in the British Museum. 
An example of the remarkable skill of the 
sculptor, it is also a commemoration of agony 
that appeals to the compassion of the most 
indifferent, an agony more pitiful than that 
of Laocoon, for the lioness was sinless, her 
ferocity exercised but for self-preservation. 

The selection of themes in sculpture and 
painting betrays the individuality of the 
artist, so also the prevailing sentiment of 
national art discloses the genius of the 
people. Place side by side the pictures of 
animals on the monuments of Egypt and 
those of Assyria, — for instance that relief of 
two contentious gods arrayed in masks sug- 
gestive of the faces of disputatious cats, their 
claws like the claws of an eagle, — and how 
immediate the judgment as to the humor of 
the people. It is the attitude toward lower 
animate life that betrays character. And 
art has recorded this attitude with unequivo- 
cal force. In all countries alike, in Egypt, 
Assyria, Greece, and Rome, the sentiment of 
the people is betrayed by pictures and sculp- 



NATURAL IMAGERY 241 

tures of these our brothers. In Italy a 
traditionary symbolism has given Christian 
art a wide choice of emblems, their pagan 
source seldom debarring their use. For 
instance, while the peacock was ascribed to 
Juno it became a symbol of immortality ; the 
lion, an Egyptian type of power, was ascribed 
to Christ and by a singular chance to the 
hermit St. Jerome also, he having reheved a 
lion by extracting a thorn from its foot. 
The serpent was used as an emblem of sin, 
when also a symbol of eternity. The dove, 
of mythical lore, became a symbol of the 
Holy Ghost. And in Itahan pictures we 
discover St. Mark, St. John, and St. Luke 
by their following of the lion, the eagle, and 
the ox. 

St. Gregory is designated by a dove close 
by his ear. The dog is not forgotten, as is 
right. St. Roch, the pilgrim monk, is accom- 
panied by a dog, and the Dominican St. 
Dominick, with a star above his head (is it 
Sirius?) has a dog for companion. The 
divine lamb leads the wide following, and it 
is of interest to note that in Greece the ewe 
suckling her lamb, as also the gentle cow her 
calf, together with the lion and two cubs, 



242 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

are the themes of reliefs, the first upon 
the famous Harpy tomb, mentioned above, 
the general treatment of the design as of the 
figures of the three women, — the robes 
drawn forward revealinsf the outline of the 
back and the emblems in their hands, betray- 
ing Egyptian influence.^ 

It is in the employment of the ewe, the 
cow, and the lioness with their offspring that 
in the symbolism of sacred art is discovered 
the final appeal of human nature to nature. 
Apprehending the tenderness of mother- 
hood, at the moment of extremity when the 
invisible door is opened, — the soul there 
bidden to pass the threshold, — the one love 
that never fails in sinless animal life is object 
of appeal. And how revolting the Assyrian 
sculpture of the dying lioness when com- 
pared with these reliefs and symbolic usages ! 
A warhke people, the ideals of Assyria were 
those which appertain to military ambition, 
nor were their ideals greatly unlilve those of 
the Roman at the period of the introduction 
of Christianity. But when divested of its 
barbarity, through many centuries Eome 

1 First named on the Harpy tomb (British Museum, 
London). The last two, Museum in Vienna. 



NATURAL IMAGERY 243 

held sway against a demoralizing paganism, 
and it is due to Roman strenuosity of spirit 
that the decadence in Greece, denounced 
through the inspirations of the unknown 
sculptors at Rhodes and Pergamus (and 
commemorated by Lucretius), did not blight 
its genius, overrun as Italy was by Hellenic 
artists after the conquest of Greece. 

Infatuated with Greek art, Rome may have 
been debtor to its principles, but it preserved 
its racial characteristics to such an extent 
that it was impossible to obliterate them in 
the most heedful imitation by artist or poet. 

Rome after the introduction of Christianity 
was a storm-centre of confluent tides which 
threatened to waste her fertile fields of art 
and literature, sweeping away the virility of 
thought represented by the Augustan poets 
and substituting Byzantine sentiments — 
these sentiments arising from what may be 
termed an oriental Hellenism, stagnating to 
genuine inspiration, clogging the avenues of 
expression with sediments from an effete 
civilization, the influence of which is apparent 
in works of art from the fourth to the ninth 
centuries of the Christian era, and during 
which period Italy possessed no indigenous 



244 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

art. But the virility of the Roman race at 
length asserted itself in art as it had in war, 
the thirteenth century producing a Dante 
and a Giotto, revolutionary spirits in the 
theatre of poetic and artistic expression, 
neither imitators, but both maintaining an 
originality that easily made them leaders 
in a revolt against tradition, a revolt which 
may be said to have had its centre in Cima- 
bue's studio, where the three ardent advo- 
cates, Cimabue, Giotto, and Dante, held high 
converse on the ideals of art. Giotto's fear- 
lessness of character bore him far beyond 
Cimabue's more reserved improvements upon 
Byzantine style of painting, and hence the 
new school of which he is claimed to be 
founder, a school that Hnked the super- 
natural and natural in scenes of saints and 
servants, shepherds and sinners, a trait of the 
pending revolution in art that gave to 
Giotto's works the stamp of originality dis- 
tinguishing them from all paintings of his 
period but also from those of his followers, 
his hio^h-handed leveling; of sacred char- 
acters to the common theatre of daily experi- 
ence being a species of anarchy uncommon 
to imperial Rome. But it should be re- 



NATURAL IMAGERY 245 

raembered that behind him towered the great 
Florentine bard whose arraignment of church 
and state was equally mutinous toward tra- 
dition and full of the fire of a democratic 
republicanism and for which Rome in its 
prosperous period is responsible. Dante sang 
of life and nature, and, unrestrained by self- 
interest, muTored the problems of his time, 
his position as a layman making it more 
possible than for Savonarola to arraign the 
profligacy of the priesthood. 

In the "Divina Commedia," indeed, dis- 
closing the vimda vis animi of an Italian 
genius, it is made manifest how impossible, 
for example, was the Parthenon to Rome and 
how likely a St. Peter's, how certain a Michael 
Angelo and improbable a Praxiteles, or in- 
deed a Phidias, while a Fra Angelico, Peru- 
gino, and a Raphael might be anticipated, 
as at last in the decadence a Salvator Rosa. 
For Dante was Italy's prophet, a more than 
Homer, the narrator and laudator of the 
Hellenes, he was the genius of that epoch 
that is termed the renaissance, but which in 
fact was but an epoch of development, — an 
evolution of an individualism that distin- 
guishes man from man as the human species 



246 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

had been differentiated from the animal; 
an era when the variation of which the more 
marked hneaments of the human face is an 
illustration demanded the rejection of the 
ideal presented in Greek portraiture, its lin- 
eaments being an insufficient index of the 
spirit within. But this new type demanded 
interpretation, and through the limitation of 
expression that interpretation has continued 
to be dependent on figures of speech, on 
natural imagery indeed such as was em- 
ployed in ancient scripture. 

And is it not a gratifying discovery to the 
lover of his kind to find in ancient scripture 
that when apparently grotesque the imagery 
used even in those ancient days is exactly 
adapted to the purpose of selection, that the 
figure selected could not be superseded by 
any other object? 

Moreover, this evidence of acute analysis 
is reassuring when considering the problem 
of human mentality, its rise and development 
and final direction. 

Animal life, including the hfe of bird and 
beast, is an exponent of human tendencies, 
man being serially evolved out of that life 
vestiges of which often make or mar his 



NATURAL IMAGERY 247 

career. Intuitively he reads the ilkiminated 
book of nature written in a sign-language. 
And it is its interpretation that gives to 
the pictured monuments of Egypt their curi- 
ous interest, for upon these monuments is set 
down in natural imagery those intuitions 
which came to man when in immediate as- 
sociation with animal life, these associations 
finally becoming a basis of figurative expres- 
sion in which was conveyed those views of 
life hereafter that have been related above. 
Views that it may be conjectured were fully 
explained to the Greek philosopher who 
journeyed to Africa in quest of knowledge. 
And the philosophers of Sais and of Athens 
severally impressed upon monuments of stone, 
in their scripture and secular literature, ideas 
that are of momentous value in the history 
of man, ideas that are a revelation of the 
scope of intellectual progress at an early 
date. Whence the absorbins" interest in ar- 
chaic objects wherever found — if buried in 
the debris of the Nile or in the Acropolis. 

And it is of peculiar interest in a study 
of human nature to find while tracing the 
impress of representative exponents of the 
ideals of art an evidence of succession : 



248 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the priest of Sais precedes the philosopher 
o£ the Academy at Athens, Pythagoras 
visits the Nile and afterward Plato finds his 
way to Sicily for the purpose of learning the 
tenets Pythagoras has adopted. Successor 
to thought set loose from the brain of the 
Egyptian, and dropped like a seed in the live 
soil of a Greek mind, Plato builds a temple 
of philosophy which became the Mecca of a 
learned world, its environs extending until 
Neo-Platonism is a watchword of modern 
thought. And as philosophy, so art and 
architecture extended their influence, and 
from Egypt. 

The Greek genius, keen, blithe, and pene- 
trating, reproduced the Trabeate form of 
temple and so adorned that it is an Egyptian 
idea transfigured. And in art Greek genius 
electrified the marbles of Paros, dismissing 
the solemnity of the ideals of Egypt, this 
liliaceous efflorescence at last moved west- 
ward, where its reign was disputed by the 
rosacese of Italian art. But as we have 
pointed out, the course of art has been on- 
ward, its movement like that of the sun in 
spring northward, the Germanic and Gallic 
races and the two branches of the AnHo- 



NATURAL IMAGERY 249 

Saxon under its waxing power developing 
more comprehensive ideals, ideals that in- 
clude nature and human nature, — not only 
" real life," but Absolute Life. 



VIII 

LAW .IN THINGS, LOVE AND RESURRECTION 

To the opinion that the primitive cere- 
monial rite indicated a feeHng of account- 
ahiHty to a higher power, and hence man 
should be characterized as a religious animal 
in contradistinction to other forms of ani- 
mate hfe, it is objected that since the rite is 
mimetic, the object of the mimicry to rob 
divinity of exclusive control over the eco- 
nomy of nature, there is no more proof of 
religious sentiment on the part of man than 
is suggested by the mimetic role of a moth 
seeking self-preservation by assuming the 
idiosyncrasy of another species. Of the 
ceremonial rite it may be said, indeed, that 
while betraying the increasing mentality of 
man its invention does not eliminate the 
close hkeness between human and animal 
life; on the contrary, the purpose of the in- 
vention being identical, it emphasizes that 
likeness. The object of the rite was self- 



LAW IN THINGS 251 

preservatloD, and such is the scheme of the 
mimicry of the moth ; the object identical, 
each were equally destitute of moral scruple, 
— determined on robbery, the one of divine 
rulership, the other of protective conditions 
not belonging to its species, both man and 
moth unscrupulously invented means to com- 
pass their ends. And furthermore, an in- 
vention exercising the imagination possessed 
by scheming plants, insects, animals, and 
men, these mimetic performances are exam- 
ples of an ambition which, destitute of moral 
sentiment, generated the egoism that led to 
an exclamation which, accompanying a primi- 
tive rite, is typical, that exclamation being : 

/ am spirit, 1 ivalk the sky ! 

and wherein pride in the proof of his in- 
ventive power intoxicating the inventor he 
clamis that he is god ! 

And this reiterated exclamation, a repre- 
sentative sentiment of the rite of the Red 
man, is similar to that which was used in 
Egyptian rites : " I am Ra, I am Osiris." 
An assumption, however, followed by a de- 
claration : " My food is Ra's food. My food 
is Osiris's food. / eat the Truth ! " — which 



252 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is in effect an explanation of how the author 
of the exclamation became a god, — that is, 
became Ra and Osiris, — a statement in 
which is traceable a sense of accountability, 
even a moral sentiment indeed, that may be 
termed religious in the sense of law-in-tkings, 
since togcether with this statement is dis- 
covered a knowledge of the orderly activity 
of forces whence is animate life as also the 
perpetuity of the physical universe. 

But if religious, the sentiment is without 
piety if by that term is meant reverence 
and self-abnegation, for the exclamation, " My 
food is Ra's food, I eat Truth," accompanies 
a rite nominally instituted for the tradition- 
ary object, a purpose of control, a desire for 
perpetuity still giving occasion for an effort 
to get possession of the forces of Kfe, that 
possession assumed to bestow a perpetuity of 
personal existence as endless as the conti- 
nuity of solar form manifested by the sun, 
man, otherwise subject to death, becoming 
through the inventions of this rite " sound 
and immortal as the sun," — as it is assever- 
ated in the scriptures wherein laudation to 
Truth is made. And these rites were mi- 
metic, the acknowledgment of accountabihty 



LAW IN THINGS 253 

— that is, of the necessity to feed on Truth 
(claimed to be both the food and body of 
the gods, also), occasioning an accession 
rather than limitation of the schemes prac- 
ticed in those more primitive ceremonials 
such as are found, for example, among the 
aborio-ines of America. Whence it is de- 
duced that though evidently an evolution in 
which is shown increased knowledge of the 
forces of nature, acknowledgment of an 
accountability on the part of the Egyptian 
devotee did not have the effect to reduce his 
assumption ; on the contrary it induced an 
ambition to procure that power recognized 
in Truth to the end of becoming as the gods 
(the gods who were impersonations of those 
forces of which some knowledge had been 
acquired). Accumulated experience had 
brought forth man's reasoning powers as in 
the case of the Indian prince of ancient 
Mexico, who remarked : " I perceive that 
the sun must have a sovereign controlling 
his movements or he would not confine him- 
self to one path in the heavens." 

But Indian rites as Egyptian were believed 
to contravene the purposes of the rulmg god, 
primeval and semi-civilized man when exer- 



254 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

cising his reason resorting to mimicry, his 
rites when under either condition exceeding 
by quality of invention only the remarkable 
mimetic schemes of lower animals, and more- 
over directed by the same desire, exhibiting 
an inordinate self-love of which greed of 
power is principal characteristic. In ancient 
lore, indeed, there is preserved stories of 
heroes whose Promethean greed of power 
testifies to a common ambition to steal the 
fires of heaven, that is, to wield the thunder- 
bolt of Jove, the scintillating lightning be- 
lieved to be the force whence comes vegetal 
and animal life. These stories based on nat- 
ural phenomena, and on the belief that man 
is an integrant part of that phenomena, 
allied to beast, bird, plant, and the sun, finally 
appear in myths of the character of the story 
of Adam and Eve wherein punishment fol- 
lows this over-vaulting ambition, Hebraic 
sense of the law in thin^-s assuming; that a 
Nemesis lurks in the attractions of nature, 
her fruits seized by trespassing hand. 

But though these myths convey a warn- 
ing, they seem to have had slight influence 
in destroying the natural craving of human 
nature to gain ascendency over the forces 



LAW IN THINGS 255 

whose power is witnessed in nature, and those 
particularly whereby vegetal life is restored, 
for if this power were gained continuity of 
hfe would be insured. And there are ac- 
counts of rites that shadow forth with what 
earnestness this power was sought among 
the least civilized peoples, but it is among 
the Egyptian was developed a complete sys- 
tem of rites assumed to insure the consum- 
mation of human desire, these mimetic of 
natural phenomena as in the case of the more 
barbaric ceremonials. And these rites em- 
bodied ideas of the resurrection of the soul, 
which, it appears, was believed to be a spark 
from a creative essence, and of the nature of 
solar substances, that is to say, a substance 
that is productive of attributes of which 
light and heat are the physical indication, 
these attributes truth and love. This view 
of the substance of the soul, it would seem, 
suggested its representation as a nebula or 
fiery kernel which is destined to develop into 
a complete organism or world, a star among 
kindred stars ! Great stress is placed on 
the correspondence between the physical and 
spiritual planes, and the evolution of a planet 
was assumed to illustrate the development of 
the soul. 



256 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

The soul, in fact, to substitute another 
metaphor, when escaping the body is Hke a 
seed discharged from the mother plant ; it is 
but a germ whose future is marked by growth 
in a new earth. Osiris — who is the repre- 
sentative of the human soul, and hero of a 
resurrection drama illustrated in Egyptian 
writing — exclaims with a note of triumph, 
" / cjrow^^ as he passes through the devious 
passages from the tomb to the Field of Aaru, 
an exclamation that suggests the statement 
by Plato that man is a plant not of earthly 
but heavenly growth. 

It is evident that the Egyptians deduced 
from observation of natural life that mater- 
nal love in essence is of that creative princi- 
ple whence is the human soul. This love, 
therefore, is assumed to be the source of be- 
ing, all existences, solar, planetary, animate, 
or inanimate, derived from the outpouring 
of mother-love. The Egyptian Pantheon de- 
notes this belief, all the gods having their 
lineage from a goddess whose abode is in 
the heavens and whose raiment is a garment 
of suns. 

That love is a procreant force was con- 
fidently deduced from observation of animal 



LAW IN THINGS 257 

life, and this force Avas believed to be of the 
nature of solar rays, these producing vernal 
growth and ripening vegetal seeds. A procre- 
ant energy, it is immanent in all substances 
whence atomic affinity. It is an energy that 
gives a potentiality of organization to dust 
— that dust into which the human body 
returns and lohence it came. It is a means 
of resurrection. 

Illustrations of the rites attendant on the 
annual burial ceremony representing the 
death of Osiris and his final resurrection dis- 
close the remarkable assumption that it is a 
magnetic force which restores the dead to 
life. It is by the application of magnetic 
passes from the human hand that Osiris is 
shown to arise and walk. This assumption, 
however, if remarkable, is in consonance 
with that ancient notion which would arro- 
gate to man those forces which appear to 
dominate nature. Magnetism assumed to 
awaken the dead is but an electric current, 
and in the hand of man when laid on the 
dead is like that electric bolt, represented in 
the hand of Zeus, which awakens vegetal 
life. 

That this electric and magnetic force was 



258 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

believed to be one and the same in hand o£ 
man and the sun is evident, since in the 
series of iUustration representing the resur- 
rection of Osiris there are pictures of the 
sun in the act of irradiating points of Hght 
terminating in human hands, these pictures 
associated with those representing the appH- 
cation of " magnetic passes." And this cor- 
relation is of natural inference, since the soul, 
the animating spark of human life, was be- 
lieved to be of like element to that which 
gives actinic power to the sun. 

But it is necessary, in order that Egyptian 
ideas respecting man and his resurrection 
should not be misunderstood and the priests 
of the Nile be re«:arded as in effect material- 
ists, to explain that while determining the 
nature of the substance of the soul they did 
not fail to draw conclusions from the fact 
that the principle and essence of life is Love. 
Always in all characterization of the soul it is 
declared that an orderly condition, an adher- 
ence to truth, and sympathy for all objects 
of charity is necessary to its perpetuity. 
Without love — the vital principle — and 
without truth — vivifying attribute — the 
soul falls into ruin, disintegi^ation taking 
place. 



LAW IN THINGS 259 

And it lies in his own power whether man 
dies or hves : an ultimatum in Egyptian 
philosophy in which may be perceived an 
affirmation of man's free-agency as also a 
Avitness to the never yielding purpose to 
gain control over forces that possess a crea- 
tive and self-sustaining power, — that" is, a 
purpose to become " as the gods." 

In appeahng to the court of nature, to illus- 
trate the universality of the principle assumed 
to be the source of life, the Egyptian's argu- 
ment might have been shipwrecked, since in 
nature there is the appearance of cruelty 
rather than love. And it is an indication 
of his understanding that he specializes the 
character of the love which is claimed to be 
the source of life. The vulture is surely 
wanting in love, except in that mother-love 
for its young which it bears in common with 
other birds ; true of the vulture, true of the 
rapacious hawk, a symbol of equal impor- 
tance in Egyptian imagery. 

Nature offers in all animate life examples of 
entire indifference to pain inflicted, whether 
in course of appeasing hunger or in gambol- 
ing with a weaker victim ; in fact nature is 
replete with illustrations of apparent cruelty, 



260 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

a ferocious instinct to destroy showing itself 
in beast and bird. But it is not obvious 
that there is an intention to cause suffering 
on the part of beast or bird. Experience 
has taught the writer that a child taking up 
the habit of setting: its teeth into the hand of 
its nurse knew that it produced pain only 
when shown by a corresponding act inflicted 
upon itself ; and if this is true concerning a 
child, is it not likely that beast and bird are 
ignorant of the pain following acts apparently 
done out of sheer wantonness, and when 
great suffering ensues ? Sympathy demands 
imagination, a characteristic that appertains 
to the higher developed mind. 

Moreover, is not consciousness of pain de- 
pendent on conditions that include an active 
imagination ? The whiplash of pain is not 
felt by the dullard as by the man of genius, 
and it may be safely inferred that lower ani- 
mate life is exempt from that which is termed 
pain. The dolphin, destitute of a nervous 
organization, destroys and is destroyed with- 
out that agony which is so falsely assumed 
to be associated with death. He bounds 
across the heaving breast of the sea, dealing 
destruction as he leaps, marking his progress 



LAW IN THINGS 261 

with the torn bodies of those idling sunfish 
which love the light and air ; but is there 
conscious suffering in the wrack ? It is quite 
unlikely. Even as highly organized as is 
man, when held fast by the prehensile claws 
of the lion, as happened to Livingstone, 
all sensitiveness to pain fails, — paralyzed 
by the extremity of the position. 

But if the charge of ferocity in nature is 
met by a claim of ignorance together with a 
want of imagination (that projectile force 
which enables the human heart to feel for 
another), it remains that often love is want- 
ing, and so, except for maternal love, nature 
offers slight sign of the divine principle, ob- 
ject of Egyptian belief, a fact that discloses 
how wise the specialization of the character 
of the principle to be set forth, — that it is 
embodied in the passion of the birds, whence 
comes their self-abnegation, — that it is mo- 
ther-love pure and simple. 

Egypt's nature-studies dictated that mo- 
therhood should be apotheosized, be it that 
of plant, bird, beast, or man. Madonnas 
of the rose and the lily, of the swallow and 
the lapwing, of the lion and of man, each 
are witness to a divine protective love. It is 



262 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

this view that caused the lily of the Nile, 
emblem of womanhood and symbol of the 
god of the dawn, to be sculptured upon the 
closed door of the mausoleum fronting the 
north whence speed magnetic currents, as 
also figures of Resurrection Mothers, god- 
desses of the celestial realms of the dead, 
to be pictured upon those pupa-Hke cases 
wherein repose the last vestige of the de- 
parted. 



IX 

MUSIC 

The same powers of invention that prim- 
itive man applied in making the bow and 
arrow, or the stone implement, were exercised 
in making the first musical instrument, but 
the purpose of the former differed from the 
latter in that one was intended to aid in pro- 
viding the sustenance of life while the other 
was intended to influence the protectors and 
givers of life. 

And this purpose, by associating the in- 
strument with rites dedicated to these deified 
sources, gives a peculiar interest to the in- 
vention, since it implies processes of thought, 
including the exercise of imagination in its 
incipient stages, which are supposed to be 
peculiar to the human species; and since these 
rites, moreover, in their earliest form were 
instituted not only to influence, as has been 
said, but to control the deific forces that were 
beheved to rule the elements whereby vege- 



264 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

tal life is restored, their vernal reawaken- 
ing followed by growth and fruitage pro- 
viding sustenance to the children of men. 

Chief of the instruments employed in 
these rites was the drum, upon which it may 
well be supposed invention expended its 
utmost skill to the end of compassing a 
grand reverberation of tone, the importance 
of which lie in the fact that this reverbera- 
tion, intended to imitate the roll of thunder 
in the vernal shower, was assumed to aid its 
impetus to activity in the vegetal world, 
that is to say, in successful mimicry of 
thunder the power of the god of thunder 
was insured to the mimic, his drum becoming 
vehicle to those forces of the conqueror 
which were exercised in waging battle upon 
the foes of vegetation. 

But there was an adjunct to the roll of 
thunder in the whir and splash of hail, and 
the genius of invention was only satisfied 
when a rattle was fabricated that should 
mimic this sound, — a sound that was in- 
dicative of immediate action upon vernal life. 
It is difficult to fancy the pride of man in 
these two inventions, so crude were they, but 
it is easy to realize the strength of the motive 



MUSIC 265 

prompting the invention, — a motive under- 
lying all stress of labor in the animate world, 
that being security to life, the desire for 
which caused the or2:anization of vernal 
ceremonials wherein the drum and rattle were 
a prominent feature. 

The organization of a ceremonial included 
a demand for successive movement, such as 
was witnessed in the journey of the sun 
from east to west, the actors in the proces- 
sion posturing in mimicry of some tutelar 
god or impersonated elemental force con- 
ceived to be influential in vernal productiv- 
ity. And it was these actors that the sound 
of the drum was intended to influence as 
also the elemental warriors, the actors' move- 
ments associating them with these warriors ; 
thus instrumentalists and actors became 
abetters to the dispensation of vernal life, 
and hence the simultaneousness of beating 
drum and shaking rattle, together with plant 
of foot, a oneness of motive inducing con- 
cordant action, increasing rapidity of playing 
on the part of the instrumentalist occasion- 
ing rapidity of dancing, for change of time, 
either fast or slow, had instantaneous effect 
in change of movement in the dance. 



266 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

And such was the beginning of all musi- 
cal drama, — noise, clash, and reverberation, 
and these, though imitative, without beauty 
of tone. The wild man held as of first im- 
portance the motive of his invention, — the 
motive of his rite, — sound was symbolic, its 
service like that of color lying in association. 
In effect the idea was paramount, for this 
dedicated and consecrated ; but that idea 
primarily excluded fastidiousness, as it was 
in exercise merely in behalf of the instinct 
of self-preservation. And it was generated 
when as an organism man in many ways was 
inferior to the lower animals. His sight was 
not equal to the sight of some birds, his 
hearing was less acute than that of some 
beasts ; but while organically inferior in these 
respects a cumulative activity of the brain at 
report of eye and ear suggested means of 
expression that at length included rhythm 
and measure producing a harmony in dance 
and song whence arose musical composition, 
thus brain power, towards which evolution 
had been directed from the beginning, — 
brain power, not eye or ear, gave birth to 
ceremonials and to music : the latter, the 
nightingale of arts, indeed, was hatched in 



MUSIC 267 

the recesses of mental impressions, delivered, 
it is true, by organs of transmission, but not 
overruled by them, these impressions being 
subject to the human will, — a formidable 
power in the making or marring of ideals, 
whether in art or music ! 

The history of music begins with the 
exercise of inventive power appHed in pro- 
ducing instruments of percussion, and at first 
aU musical sound was realistic, designed, like 
the roll of the primitive drum, to some material 
end, the sole requirement volume of sound. 
But at length invention was brought under 
control of the heart as well as the head, when 
followed the construction of another instru- 
ment, the clash of the rattle nor the roll of 
the drum desired, — an instrument that does 
not depend upon the force of the hand, but 
upon the breath of man, and so laid to the 
lips whence is speech ; and thus emphasizing 
his tale of love through the direct tones of 
a flute the Indian lover wooed the dusky 
maiden of the forest. But not only was the 
use of this instrument an epoch in the arts 
of wooing, it was an era in the development 
of emotional expression. Differing from 
instruments of percussion, its purpose was 



268 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

less that of demand than appeal, a distinction 
in character applicable to the head and heart, 
or the intellect and affections. 

And now inventive power is accelerated, 
the intellect quickened by sensibility to 
gentler tones, and in course of time various 
forms of musical instruments are made acces- 
sory to rites and ceremonials, these instru- 
ments expressive of more exalted sentiment, 
whence the invention of the church orsran 
and orchestral instruments appHed in modern 
opera, the one class devoted to divine, the 
other to human love. 

But it is here worthy of observation that 
the modern orchestral instruments, those ex- 
pressive of human passion, betray the early 
delight in volume of tone not only, but the 
clash of cymbal and roll of drum, these be- 
ing often as dominant as when the rattle and 
drum were sole instruments of the perform- 
ance. The drum expresses a martial insist- 
ence that seeks control by brute force, hence 
indeed its invention ; and if there is a corre- 
sponding meaning, as may be said, in the 
blare of the trumpet, a tempestuous attack 
and rout therein signified, the drum for 
downright obstinacy and beleaguering as- 



MUSIC 269 

surance exceeds this instrument : around it 
clings its primeval pm-pose of invention, and 
with its reverberations are aroused the in- 
stincts that were impulse to imitation of the 
god of the tempest, lord of war. Satisfying 
primitive habits of thought, it characterized 
the attitude of man toward the unseen, which 
was that of an unwilling subject whose sub- 
ordination is tentative, the possible escape 
from which was one of the objects of mim- 
icry. 

And this sentiment exists in human nature 
at the present time, a survival, as the drum, 
of ambitious desire to control environment. 
But that singleness of purpose characteristic 
of human nature in the beofiuning^ does not 
appertain to it now, complex waves of ex- 
perience developing complexity of mental 
forces, and, rising to a higher maximum of 
skill, man has put forth other inventions, as 
has been said these inventions responsive to 
enlarged conceptions, new instruments ex- 
pressing by means of diverse tones the more 
complex state which experience had in- 
duced. 

But the invention of new instruments was 
not at the beginning followed by musical 



270 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

compositioa other than such as were im- 
promptu and suggested by concordant action 
in ceremonial rites and primitive fetes in 
which the dance was a prominent feature, 
the apphcation of the new instruments to 
these fetes g^rowiuof out of a sense of tonal 
power that had been inferred from the sound 
of thunder at period of vegetal resurrection, 
the noise and clangor of instrmnents beHeved 
to incite activity. It was this idea that 
prompted the dire clangor of Chinese in- 
struments on the event of an eclipse, sound 
believed to be an actual power, — a power 
that was equally effective in the far regions 
of the sidereal world as upon man. But 
in both cases, it is important to remember, 
volition is the power acted upon, primitive 
man having learned that tone influences the 
emotions, those motor powers of action. 

Ignorant of the laws by which loudness, 
pitch, and quality of sound were governed, 
he perceived their effect ; if of the first it is 
now said that it depends upon the ampHtude 
of vibration, of the second that it varies in- 
versely as the square of the distance from 
the sounding body, and of the third that it 
depends upon the rapidity of vibration of the 



MUSIC 271 

sounding body, both physical and psychical 
influences of sound were recognized. Unin- 
telligent and without the appliances after- 
ward invented, primitive reason assumed what 
now is explained in scholastic phraseology. 
For volition man had no name, but the wiU 
was recognized as the motor power of being, 
— of movement in the stellar world, in the 
plant kingdom, as in the animal, — activity 
in these several spheres signifying a power 
since expressed by the term "volition." And 
the emotions predicated on the will, being 
excited by different sounds, were attributed 
to the effect of those sounds, hence their 
supposed potency in ceremonial rite, w^hile 
these emotions being excited by different 
sounds in a diverse manner were occasion of 
the invention of dissimilar instruments such 
as the drum and flute, for example, the one 
giving amplitude of power to the instrumen- 
talist by its volume, the other an effectual 
aid to overwhelming sentiment. 

At this period of the development of what 
may be strictly termed human nature there 
were no sciences ; all was intuition and un- 
tutored reason. No explanation, indeed, was 
felt to be needed such as is offered by science 



272 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

as to liow sound came to be heard in the ear, 
though intelligence was sufficiently devel- 
oped to give rise to analysis in respect to its 
effect when there and to claim even that 
while the dead could not see they heard, — 
its power so expressed. 

It has been laid down as one of the canons 
of music that the instrument must exist be- 
fore the musician composes for it. The pos- 
sibilities of the instrument must be tested 
first, in fact, and its response, its tone, is 
master of the composition, its quality deter- 
mining the musical form. The imperious- 
ness of tone comes of the fact that it has an 
immediate influence upon the emotions, di- 
recting their character. For example, a love 
solo is impossible on a bass drum, a fact that 
needed no explanation to the Indian lover, 
the meaning of sound, so far, being self- 
evident. A loud sound implied mastery, 
a soft tone pleading ; and this early interpre- 
tation, due to directness and simplicity of 
thought, is ineradicable, for it is universal to 
animate life and hence it remains the basis 
of musical expression, loudness and softness 
representing variation of feeling, and a mas- 
tery over these transitions from loud to soft 



MUSIC 273 

a sign of musical genius, these transitions 
no longer a result of crude concepts as when 
used by primitive man. 

But if the effect of tone was perceived in 
the earlier stages of man's development, 
there is little evidence of sense of an in- 
trinsic beauty in the power that had brought 
about the effect. It is more evident, on the 
contrary, that only on account of some utili- 
tarian effect the tone was acquired. Fur- 
thermore, discrimination of tone is ascribable 
to its supposed uses, not to comparative 
agreeableness ; and it may be assumed that 
distinction alone arose from volume — the 
loud tone was addressed to unseen forces, 
the softer tones to a maiden's ear. And this 
idea was conceived through experience, for 
it is likely that human speech was modulated 
after the manner of application of musical 
instruments. The lover did not express his 
passion with a warcry, no more than deafen 
the maiden with a drumbeat, and these ra- 
tional selections of methods had other ground 
for their practice than beauty of tones — as 
amorous proclamations have their inconven- 
iences. 

It has been stated above that man is ex- 



274: NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

celled by lower animals in sight and hearing, 
and in the beginning his sense of tone was 
not equal to that of the birds. But it should 
be remembered that these our little brothers' 
vocal acquirements were once in an equally 
initial state and that they were of compar- 
atively slow development, for the melody of 
song birds is the result of accumulated imi- 
tations ; it is the carefully practiced modula- 
tion that has given that bravura to the bobo- 
link's song, and the meadowlark's critical 
rehearsals are suggestive of an acquired fas- 
tidiousness of taste. And there are many 
familiar examples of efforts at mastery of 
song in New England woods and fields — 
mockingbirds, so called, declare indeed that 
desire for more adequate expression held 
in common by man and lower animals. The 
catbirds, for instance, who have a low con- 
tralto note when responding one to another, 
are remarkably persistent students of tone, 
and are becoming, but for some faulty pas- 
sages, sweet singers. And since the places 
selected for these efforts are not usually in 
the open, — except it be toward the dusk 
when twilight draws a veil over day, — it may 
be conjectured that the bird is aware of its 



MUSIC 275 

deficiences (as some human vocalists are not), 
which, by persistency he hopes to overcome. 

It is certainly very clear that he would like 
attention were he to excel in song, for he 
haunts the visitor of the wood, making noise- 
less approaches, pausing at some vantage 
point behind a leaf or twig where inspection 
is made whether the visitor be native or not, 
giving utterance in a decisive cat-call full of 
a woodland animal's disdain for intruders if 
that inspection is unfavorable. 

Shy birds are more curious than sociable 
birds, the latter being better acquainted 
with the inoffensiveness of bird lovers and 
also accustomed to discriminate between 
field-glass and gun. For example, robin of 
the red breast has an aplomb worthy of the 
master of the quarter-deck as he rears his 
full front, his gaze fixed on an approaching 
figure, the very eye of an inspector and au- 
thoritative critic, appropriated perhaps from 
the ibis sacred to Egypt and consecrated to 
the god of letters, — and whose air indeed 
might well be assumed by both robin and 
literary connoisseur (supposing a crayfish 
is in ambush !), though it is manifest robin is 
the more attractive, for his is the air of the 



276 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

honorable critic, while the crooked beak of the 
ibis implies an hypercritical attitude, as but 
to see him in his natural haunts, or pictured 
on Egypt's monuments, is to acknowledge. 
And the ibis has no song (which it might be 
said makes him the better critic), while the 
robin is all melody, — does he not know it ? 
Plainly ! for did he not plant himself at a 
little distance after inspecting the writer and 
sing, his bright eyes cognizant of the quiet 
appreciation. And what rapture there was 
in his notes, — the flowery field his platform, 
his dais a stake, and his audience of one but 
a step away. 

Surely singers in the field court attention 
and are pleased with their own melody : wit- 
ness the song sparrow singing over and over 
again his little canticle, an increasing fervor 
in each repetition. And the attitude taken 
by a bird determined on rehearsal is a clear 
evidence of consciousness of the merit of 
right singing. His feet are planted firmly, 
bringing into play those muscles which se- 
cure fixity of foothold and which are in 
exercise when the bird sleeps. The perch is 
horizontal and unobstructed by leafage, — 
sometimes a bough, other times a bar of field 



MUSIC 277 

inclosiire, — and the little brother pours 
forth his notes to the final cadenza, his 
head thrown back and body a-quiver with 
emotion. 

But these are the eminent songsters, ad- 
vanced in the art of musical expression, 
hence the sobriquet " song sparrow " charac- 
terizing this bu'd above the many attractive 
singers of its species. Among birds as among 
the younger folk — members of the human 
family — there are favored spirits who declare 
the possibilities of the race, and it is not 
unlikely that the English sparrows (Ameri- 
canized !) may find their voices at last, it being 
the land of free speech. The activity of this 
sparrow is suggestive, however, of perpetual 
motion, and excess of utilitarian enterprise 
retards the development of the musical art, 
for leisure is necessary to the finer accom- 
plishments. But who can withhold admira- 
tion for these unmusical citizens of island and 
continent, England and America ? What 
pluck and daring in sleet and snow ! Here 
is man in surtout, slouched hat, boots too 
w^eighty for a child's utmost lift, and there is 
this chit, a brown tuft of feathers, a very 
knot of sturdy unflinchingness in snow or 



278 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

rain ! A street gamin of Victor Hugo's type, 
urchin of the debris and gutter, the English 
sparrow shall win at last. Nor need it de- 
spair of a voice if the law of evolution has 
not ceased, for song is hereditary in his race, 
and to be a bird is much ! 

The tuneful myriads of warblers vary their 
notes as if each elfin soul were ahve to the 
meaning of song. The elusive melody of 
the rose-breasted grosbeak, the deeper notes 
of the hermit thrush, are suggestive of re- 
miniscence, while the premeditated singing 
of the practicing bu'd is yet more suggestive 
of consideration and a sense of tone, — the 
one the result of the other in some deofree. 
Even the jubilant bobolink will pause in his 
rolHcking outpour, and recommence, when 
his finale is ever triumphal and unmatched in 
briUiancy. 

The moods of birds is a continual surprise, 
for these moods determine the note and it 
is impossible to limit its character. The 
swallows twitter, it is said, but when acci- 
dent had befallen the young of a pair of 
swallows and one alone was succored, the 
burst of melody that followed was beyond 
all description. Vying with the bobohnk, 



MUSIC 279 

and exceeding the skylark, the parent's song 
was an ecstasy of unmistakable joy, betray- 
ing possibilities on the other hand of feel- 
ing- that misrht well deter the vandal destruc- 
tion to which these innocents of God are 
liable. 

It is as pleasant to note the manoeuvres of 
birds as the tactics of plants. To them may 
be ascribed infinite variety like the Queen 
of Egypt when wooing and winning Caesar, 
while the smaller the bird the more emotional 
it is, an example of which is signally pro- 
vided in comparison of the meadowlark and 
the horned lark, the one equable and calm, 
the other mercurial, rapid in flight and 
swift on foot. 

My first acquaintance with these birds 
was eminently calculated to suggest this 
contrast. It was sunset in the valley of 
Santa Ynez, when, walking along the foot- 
hill near the sea I saw first the meadow- 
lark, aht and singing a low, continuous 
cantata which my appearance did not inter- 
rupt. The bird's attitude was one of con- 
fidence and reflection, — and in the field be- 
neath him were a pair of horned larks, their 
activity emphasized by comparison, for these 



280 NATURE AND HURIAN NATURE 

two birds ran about, climbing now and again 
the sandy slope whence there was a sharp 
acclivity meeting the loftier uplift that cul- 
minated in the summit of the Santa Ynez 
Mountains. Though rapid, the movement 
of the larks suggested a reprieve from the 
labors of the day, — hunger was appeased 
and feeding scarcely incidental to the appar- 
ent enjoyment of the hour. At each chance 
meeting in their fleet-footed change of place 
there was a flutter of wing, the male ex- 
pressing his happiness by the soft trill pe- 
cuHar to his species. The delicacy of this 
note, heard after the many-voiced airs of the 
day, charmed the ear ; in harmony with the 
influences of twilight, and, associated with 
the majesty of the adjacent mountains, whose 
foot is bathed by the crisp waves of the sea, 
it created in the mind an impression of trust- 
fulness, a security in experience with the 
sovereign forces of nature, a sense of abid- 
ing love which insures safety to the most 
frail of the forms of life. 

The pair was quite alone, an unusual cir- 
cumstance, and they chattered and trilled as 
if the earth were but a round nest and the 
sky a protecting palm overshadowing it. 



MUSIC 281 

As I continued to observe them, suddenly 
the male arose in direct line, making a swift 
straight dart into the sky — thirty, sixty, 
an hundred feet, even more, measured by 
the mountains ; and, singing as he went a 
trill more ecstatic and as delicate and indi- 
vidual as the previous notes in the field, the 
bu'd tarried above but a moment and then 
glided downward, alighting beside his Httle 
dame, who had continued to busy herself 
with the accidental trophies, delicacies of the 
appetite found in the sand, this employment 
ceasing, however, at return of her mate, and 
upon which was a flutter of wings, soft notes 
of joy, and then both arose, disappearing be- 
hind the hills. 

The softness of the notes of the horned 
lark and their limitation suggest the elusive- 
ness of the red-breasted grosbeak's song ; 
nevertheless there is a remarkable carrying 
power to the notes, for they were heard quite 
to the summit of the ascent, high up in the 
blue, ceasing only on the descent, which is 
in silence like the drop of a feather. And 
the performance seemed to be prompted by 
a momentary impulse, — a sudden ecstasy, — 
an ebullition of joy, unpremeditated, the 
flight immediately forgotten. 



282 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Difference in the period of the day appears 
to be marked by birds as by men. It is not 
usual that birds are heard singing in unison 
at evening as they are heard in the morning, 
vesper singing being occasional and erratic, 
and if in unison it is the united voices of a 
family group, — a most attractive concert, 
the accidental attendance on which the writer 
holds in cherished remembrance, the scene 
of which experience was also in the valley 
of Santa Ynez/ But the performers of this 
concert were a family of yeUow warblers who 
were alit upon a mesquite shrub, two on an 
upper bough and two on a lower, the attitude 
of each of the three (for one was a female) 
consistent with a conscious effort to be at 
concord with the other. In the perform- 
ance there was a leading note, and this was 
succeeded by a crescendo of all the voices, 
trailing off into a diminuendo to again in- 
crease in volume, the melody tender and 
delicate, which, in the stillness of the setting 
sun, suggested minstrels of the elfin world 
preparing for fairy rites. And, indeed, in 
their vesture of gold they augured a blithe 
company ! 

1 Southern California. 



MUSIC 283 

But aside from an occasional singing in 
concert, as has been stated, sunset is the 
hour for sohtary piping in the bird world, 
while the break of day brings an assemblage 
of songsters filling the air with melody, this 
auspicious moment heralded by the honest 
note of the robin, a note heard above all 
other sounds, be man or dog a-field, for it is 
a call note, a reveille rather than a song, 
it being an announcement of the coming 
sun. 

The matin hymn of birds is marked by 
crescendo and diminuendo, a scherzo and 
andante, movements suggested by the varied 
powers of the performers. And this dawn 
ceremonial was calculated to attract the at- 
tention of the barbaric citizen of the natural 
world — that mimic man, — and it is not 
occasion of surprise that the Red man was 
one of the first to copy the performance, an 
account of which is given by an of&cer of 
the United States Army^ whose duties had 
taken him to northern Cahfornia. Here in 
a little hamlet, while the guns of his men, 
undiscovered by the residents, covered the 
tepees of the awaking inmates, he heard as 

1 Captain Pratt, U. S. A. 



284 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the sun rose a low murmur, increasing grad- 
ually in volume, and finally breaking forth 
in a distinct acclamation, the performance 
much like the matins of the bkds, there 
being no distinguishable words. A most 
impressive incident, — the scene including 
armed soldiery and those children of nature 
who yet retained their traditional customs, 
— typical of the too frequent attitude of the 
strong toward the weak, it also implies that 
concordant vocalization was used by wild 
man after the fashion of wild bu-ds. 

But the matin of either man or birds, it 
may be inferred, was the result of practice. 
The trainino- of the little warblers witnessed 
by the writer is a significant example of the 
sense of sound, as also of the power of uni- 
son, while the development of varied fete 
sonofs amonof barbarians declares a discrim- 
ination in tonal expression requiring both 
analysis and practice. And, furthermore, it 
is important to note that consciousness of 
effect is equally evident among both men and 
birds. The bird varies his tone to suit the 
emergency, and man applied the vowel sound 
to songs of victory, the breath tones to ex- 
pression of sorrow, the emission of which 



MUSIC 285 

was without formulated word, the tone being 
its own interpretation, as may be seen in 
songs of the Red men. The dirge of primi- 
tive man is but an emphasized sigh, arising 
from the notion, it is hkely, that the depart- 
ure of the soul is governed by a cessation of 
the breath, a notion that was origin of a cus- 
tom among our Indians to respire as the 
dead passed, this respiration in aid of his 
soul's escape.^ Hence perhaps the applica- 
tion of the term " breath feather " to the 
downy plume of the eagle, claimed to be of 
the character of the soul's body, mentioned 
on a preceding page. And, furthermore, 
the Sanskrit word saama (sa, speech, ama, 
breathing forth), applied to the Vedic chant, 
betrays an idea of the nature of this method 
of expression, — that is, that the chant is 
prompted from within as the so-called sigh 
from the heart. But whether implied in 
language or in ancient custom, it is evident 
that human nature was early governed by 
ideas of discrimination of tone, which, though 
broad, were applied rationally, — that is, with 
natural judgment, and such indeed as is dis- 

^ Jesuit Relations, also Publications of Chants, Smith- 



286 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

closed in the vocalization of feeling in uni- 
versal nature. And it should be noted that 
tonal acquirement is accelerated by mutual- 
ity of feeHng as also impassioned love. 

Love is at the basis of choral unison ; 
sympathy, of symphony ; and it is one of 
the lessons of nature that birds of prey are 
songless and soHtary. 

Harsh sounds are disintegrating and sweet 
sounds unifying, a fact so well known that 
when least learned, man exercises vocaliza- 
tion in accordance with it. The bruit of 
the city is significant of strenuosity in the 
battle of life ; the maternal song at the cradle, 
of the tenderness underlying that life. The 
greater the power the sweeter its expression ; 
and only when human energy is exerted as 
are divine energies, noiselessly or harmoni- 
ously, as the stars " sing together," will hu- 
man life be crowned by delight. Every 
home a theatre for a symphony in speech as 
sweet as that of the warblers alit upon the 
mesquite shrub in Santa Ynez valley ; traffic 
in city streets as noiseless as the growth 
of trees, or as destitute of harsh sounds as 
a beehive ; clangor subdued, the voices of 
criers of wares obedient to tonal laws, — 



MUSIC 287 

then only might man claim himself a harmo- 
nious citizen of God's world, this maintained 
by active forces the most powerful of which 
are silent. 

The history of the musical art is not 
unHke that of painting and sculpture, for 
primitive skill was tardy in development of 
means througrh which emotions mio-ht be 
expressed, while those emotions were based 
on crude concepts of nature and the power 
whence life is derived. As has been said, 
tone originally had its value inasmuch as it 
was imitative, but the exigencies of the imi- 
tation, together with the mimetic form of the 
ceremonial, — wherein instruments were em- 
ployed whose tone gave emphasis to the per- 
formance, — developed rhythm, — a certain 
degree of time and measure being necessary 
to the purposes of the rite. And this rhythm 
and measure was obligatory not only to the 
movements of the dance but to the actor's 
cries, together with those phrases used in 
primitive ceremonial which were the initia- 
tion of the chant of a higher literary form. 
And, as has been implied, there were diverse 
kinds of chants used in these ceremonials in 
accordance with the object of the perform- 



288 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ance ; the spring fete was of a hilarious 
nature, but there was the funeral rite, as also 
other nature rites which were expressive of 
sorrow or of desire to placate evil powers, the 
death of man and the death of vegetal life 
associated with an accidental evil, these occur- 
rences made the occasion of mimetic rites in 
which the chant was a dirge, the emotions of 
hilarity ceasing, — the cries no longer joyful, 
the form of expression that which is used in 
the recitative of later ceremonies. And these 
were the first choruses, — the hilarious chant 
and the joyless dirge, — whence arose the 
Greek chorus as the modern in the oratorio. 
But this form of expression was subordinate 
in the chant of the Greek drama, and in its 
survival in the oratorio it is as at the begin- 
ning a commentary and explanation, a more 
sustained intonation, a more measured form 
of sentence ; it was accessory to the perform- 
ance whose theme was thus emphasized. 

The primitive chorus, it is evident, was 
initiatory to modern vocal music, and there- 
fore around it as a nucleus gathered other 
methods of expression, the strophe and anti- 
strophe of the Greeks, for example ; but this, 
initiatory in its turn, a form which is care- 



MUSIC 289 

fully trimmed to measure and rhythm and 
which in case of ^schylus's tragedies has a 
weirdness of effect that gives greater force 
to the performance of the actors. 

It is claimed that Greece received its 
limited knowledge of music from Egjrpt, and 
it is in Egypt's annual Osirian rites that 
there was a mimetic performance in which 
the leader chanted the direful tragedy of 
death — its inevitableness — the impossible 
return to past conditions of those who have 
departed — the morrow being successor of 
to-day. During the performance of this rite 
in a chamber of the tomb the gauze-veiled 
figures of women moved to the rhythmic 
concord, as dance ephemera at setting of sun, 
while the voice of the leader of the rite was 
heard descanting on the divine provisions of 
Osiris, lord over death. And this the chief 
of tragedies suggests those weird Hellenic 
performances, mimetic of the tragedies of 
life ; in the one case all thought is turned 
upon the issues of death, in the other there 
is a dramatic presentation of the events of 
life and their effect upon human destiny. 

And while dramas both, there is no orches- 
tral accompaniment, for out of the philoso- 



290 NATURE AND HUIVIAN NATURE 

phy of neither race had come a demand for 
such musical expression. Musical composi- 
tion, indeed, did not exist when the arts 
flourished among both peoples — the purpose 
of the one to adorn the monuments dedicated 
to the divinized dead, and of the other to 
realize ideals, to actualize emotion, and to 
adorn life.^ And it was not until after the 
Christian era, in 384 a. D., that any serious 
attempt was made to develop musical expres- 
sion and place it among the fine arts, and 
at this period the efforts made were of the 
most rudimentary character. But, a begin- 
ning having been made whereby changes 
were wrought that did not fail of apprecia- 
tion in the eighth century, others of greater 
moment came to pass, these being of such 
incentive that, in the ninth century, a Flan- 
ders monk (St. Hucbald) was inspired to write 
a treatise upon harmony in which was illus- 
trated the fact that a simultaneous sound- 
ing of different tones was a more adequate 
method of musical expression than that which 
had been appKed. And this treatise was an 
initiation to those tone combinations which 
now electrify the world. 

^ It is worthy of note that Plato regretted his inattention 
to the art of music. 



MUSIC 291 

The history of melody is an example of as 
sluggish a sense of the infinite gradations of 
tone as that of harmony. Tlie Ambrosian 
chant — which in effect was an ecclesiastical 
mode of saying and singing divine service — 
and the Gregorian chant constitute the earlier 
examples of the introduction of melody into 
musical composition, these illustrating a de- 
velopment from the third and fourth to the 
sixth centuries a. d. inclusive. Melody de- 
mands the finer susceptibilities of human 
nature for its inauguration in the arts of 
expression. This is shown by the general 
acclamation which volume of tone receives 
and in the fact that instruments that pro- 
vided power rather than sweetness were long 
in the ascendant — those having tones re- 
spondent to martial instincts, as the Scotch 
bagpipe, or that made a loud noise, as the 
organ at Winchester, which, having four hun- 
dred pipes and twenty-six pairs of bellows, 
required seventy men to operate it ! (and this 
organ was constructed at so late a date as 
the tenth century) — an ambitious construc- 
tion proving that invention of instruments 
was parallel with a poverty of composition 
long after the introduction of the Gregorian 



292 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

chant into the ceremonial worship of the 
church. 

However, advance, although slow, was ac- 
complished, and new theories by degrees 
filtering the cruder concepts, the results were 
eminently suggestive of an advance in the 
evolution of the young art. Gradually the 
Italian methods, in which were incorporated 
the discoveries of both the Flanders monk 
and Pope Gregory, gained such ascendency 
that innovations of the elder form were made 
of equal importance in France during the 
tenth and so forward to the fifteenth cen- 
turies. 

And as might be expected by those who 
have scanned the progress of the building 
art in Rome (its development of the vault, 
for example, and finally the rise of French 
Gothic art), musical composition received a 
new impulse through a master of the French 
school. And to M. Depres is due the intro- 
duction of popular melodies into the monoto- 
nous chant of the Italian mass, these melo- 
dies imbued with a new and startling beauty 
preparing the way to even greater changes 
in tone combinations, the new methods of 
the French school effecting in musical art 



MUSIC 293 

what was effected by the Greek scholars and 
artists when, owing to the overthrow of the 
empire by the Turks, they fled from Constan- 
tinople to the banks of the Arno and there 
instructed the Florentines in the principles 
of form-making, this done however, without 
destroying indigenous sentiment. 

Folk-song, indeed, wrought out of the ele- 
mental emotions of humanity, when intro- 
duced into sacred music (giving escape from 
the monotony of the Ambrosian chant), lib- 
eralized conceptions of the uses of music ; 
and, due to the Gallic frank and fearless 
spirit that partakes in its best phases of the 
brightness of the Greeks, this change marks 
an era in the evolution of artistic sentiment. 
It prepared the way for the Wagner opera, 
which is a living spectacle of human emo- 
tion when conscious of the influence of the 
forces of destiny, that destiny the combined 
result of human tendencies and passions. 

M. Depres's innovation drew after it the 
songs of the Troubadours in France, the 
Minnesingers of Germany, and their canzo- 
nets, roundelays, serenades, and pastorals. 
For, as happened when landscape art con- 
quered disciples in northern Eui'ope, there 



294 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

was a rapid bourgeoning of compositions, 
all aimino!" at new combinations that should 
enlarsfe the theatre of musical art. But 
while France, together with Italy and Flan- 
ders, was active in the development of music, 
Germany evolved ideas respecting the young 
art which had the effect of bringing it to 
maturity. 

It was Germanic lore that gave impetus 
to the evolution, for in this lore is discover- 
able rhythm and measure, as also a poetic 
strain of feehng that is most adequately ex- 
pressed through tone. 

The genius of the German people, direct- 
ing the avenues of expression into the 
channels necessary to the irrigation of the 
soil whence should spring its musical art, is 
marked by influences traceable to the early 
home of the race. In that genius is dis- 
coverable the mysticism of the Hindus, 
veneration for tradition, similar to the Per- 
sian, tendency to analysis attributable to the 
Greeks, together with the martial arrogance 
of the Romans, these qualities fused and 
strengthened by slow accretion of clans into 
a unified nation, and strengthened and fused, 
never losing a quality which is discoverable 
in the early home of the Germanic race. 



MUSIC 295 

It is on tlie table-lands of India, amid an 
Arcadian life, were sung the musical Vedic 
hymns, and it is in these hymns there exists 
a sentiment distinguishable in the folk-lore 
of Germany, this bearing ineffaceable signs 
of elemental human nature, a feeling that 
is characteristic of the human spirit alone 
and which is reflected in the mysticism of 
the Middle Ages, — a blending of child-Hke 
trust with an awakenmg intelhgence, per^ 
ceived in the early periods of civilization in 
all countries alike and particularly evident in 
the songs of the people. In India the Vedic 
hymns are typical of this condition, especially 
shown in the Dawn Myths, wherein human 
nature is shown to be a child of nature, its 
attitude full of trust, the heart of man young 
and his emotions finding expression through 
a rhythm and metre that, as the primitive 
dance, correspond to the pulsations of the 
heart. And the rhythm in Vedic hymns is 
present in Celtic lore as also in the sagas of 
Iceland and Scandinavia. For rhythm is 
inherent to poetic expression, and it is par- 
tially owing to this fact that music is of such 
commanding place in modern life. Further- 
more, it is among those people who have 



296 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

preserved their folk-lore most heedfully, it 
being from time immemorial a common heri- 
tage of the people, that may be found the 
most advanced musical expression, that ex- 
pression retaining its early characteristics as 
in Germany. And from equally profound 
sources as that of the folk-lore epics of the 
East arose the minnelieder, Chaucerian in 
sweetness, suggesting the youthfulness of 
the heart, which, despite the waxing age of 
the fused clans, remains a characteristic of the 
German people. It was from the minnelieder 
lyric music as lyric verse was born, escaping 
from inchoate elements as the Cyprian queen 
from the sea wave. 

But it was not the youthfulness of German 
sentiment which gave expression to musical 
harmony. Through this achievement in 
tonal expression German genius declares its 
likeness to the Hellenic. Prehistoric heirs 
in common of oriental influences, the Ger- 
man hordes bore away into central Europe 
intellectual forces that evolved harmony in 
tonal expression as were developed by the 
Greeks means of expression through sculp- 
ture, prophecies each of the actualization 
of the ideal; therefore it may be said that 



MUSIC 297 

neither has surpassed the other in inter- 
jDretation, both being remarkable for an as- 
piration to present the ideals thronging the 
threshold of real life. 

Early composers disclose the seriousness 
that characterizes the Vedic hymn and which 
is also found in German folk-lore epics, — 
Bach representing the mysticism of the 
Middle Ages, outcome of that oriental strain 
of racial heritage, and Mozart that deli- 
cacy of sentiment characterizing the minne- 
lieder. A Prospero among surging elements 
of a world of tone, Beethoven's musical ideas 
came upon his generation as an annunciation 
of the relative place among the fine arts of 
tonal expression. And as ever with repre- 
sentative genius, Beethoven impersonates 
the character of his people ; dominant in his 
personality, tasking his brain as a warrior 
his steed, his ideas pursued into their stalls 
and set choiring like angels. Demand- 
ing intellectual force, harmony predicates 
rigorous authority, a virile power that dis- 
tinguishes the works of Michael Angelo 
from Raphael's, for instance, — a virility 
which Beethoven possessed above all the 
musicians of his time and which is only 



298 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

equaled by his successor, Wagner, the heir 
to German tonal acquisitions. 

Intellectual greatness is often marred by 
a calculating egotism. Of Goethe, whose 
unhesitating persistency in self-training in- 
duced an experimental knowledge of human 
nature that was lacking in delicacy of feel- 
ing, assuming to count the pulse of the hand 
of love with the cool brain of a scientist, 
it may be said that he lived to know, 
"Light, more light," his aspiration; but of 
Beethoven it may be claimed that he lived to 
bestow — to give abundantly, the profound 
emotions of his spirit satisfied only in giving. 
Beethoven's music is an exponent of the 
impulses of human nature ; it is expressive of 
ideas without words, ideals without speech, 
— lilies of those subterranean rivers navi- 
gable only by the human spirit, sources 
whence comes all inspiration, being " the 
waters of life." In Goethe is represented the 
self-culture of the age together with its self- 
seeking trend ; but in Beethoven the need 
of expression subordinated self-consciousness, 
his art the penates in the house of the in- 
tellect, his instrument tone. Goethe pos- 
sessed himseK of an instrument also, but this 



MUSIC 299 

"was the human heart, which he was over- 
fond of dissecting, his diagnosis less that of 
a humanitarian than that of a scientist. 

But, it must be added, Beethoven was 
equally autocratic, his authority, however, 
that of a sibyl in the temple, for his enuncia- 
tions are interpreted only by the initiated. 
The keenness that is edged by the spoils 
of experience in Goethe was not wanting in 
Beethoven, and if the two were yoked, there 
is little likelihood of inequality in sheer im- 
periahstic egoism. Goethe as a lad desired 
isolation for the purpose of distinction : 
" Wolfgang, wherefore didst not cross the 
street with thy companions ? " inquired the 
mother. 

" / wished to walk hy myself that peo- 
ple might see that it was Wolfgang von 
Goethe ! " replies the son. 

This imperialistic feeling is typical of the 
German, pervading all conditions, that of 
" plain people " or of the upper classes, 
every craft having its king. It gave impulse 
to that return missive from Beethoven when 
a visitor's card on which was inscribed Land- 
Owner was presented to him : Beethoven, 
Brain-Owner ! flashed back with the celerity 



300 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of a scherzo movement. Desire for con- 
trol over the forces of Hfe that appeared 
in the first intellectual effort of man is as 
apparent in the representative genius of 
Germany as in the primitive ceremonial, for 
there is the drum-tap of egoism in the con- 
centrated energy of human nature (the first 
agent to evolution) at the basis whereupon 
arose musical harmony, Germany's repre- 
sentative art. 

Grasp of an idea to its final formulation, 
laying hold of a concept to its realization 
in concrete shape, a single word descriptive 
and radiative with detail, is a conspicuous 
quality of its literature, and German musi- 
cal combinations of tone are laden with 
facets whose multitudinous hues are typical 
of the varied emotions of the human spirit ; 
revelations in tone, they are like the appari- 
tion of a rainbow in a sunbeam. 

And it is in this quality of a revealer 
music becomes imperialistic ; a sibyl, it will 
have no dictation, its influence coercive and 
impassioned. 

Sound is equally dominant over the senses 
as over the soul ; it sets sand grains into sym- 
metry of position, it also thrills the living 



MUSIC 301 

tissues of the human body with delight or 
with sadness. 

Examples of these effects are common if 
the character of the music is evolved by 
events, martial music inspiring martial in- 
stincts and funeral dirges invoking tears. 
And this discrimination of application of 
special forms of music is an inheritance of 
man, not derived at the epoch of his evolu- 
tion, but from nature, nourisher of human 
nature. Tonal distinctions made by birds 
are an evidence of a natural discrimination 
as also of intrinsic meaning in musical 
sounds — sounds which are dependent on 
emotion, and which never fail of reaching 
the understanding of these our little brothers, 
suggesting that while language often con- 
ceals thought, tone reveals it ; a suggestion 
that leads to the important conclusion that 
tonal revelations are intimately connected 
with those intuitions which are superior to 
processes dependent on reason : dependent 
on the affections, these revelations demand 
sympathy, and such sympathy as exists in 
likeness of ideals. Whence, it is inferred, the 
wide diversrence of interest in music and also 
the diverse character of national expression 



302 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

by means of it. That nature which is alive 
with tenderness comprehends the meaning of 
tone in a manner incomprehensible to the 
less tender and phlegmatic, and the musical 
composer of one race will express exaltation 
where another reveals delicacy and refine- 
ment and still another dominancy and aspira- 
tion, whatever the theme, for the musician, 
like the artist, is unable to divest himself of 
racial traits. Therefore a German musician 
is German, the French is of the Frank spirit, 
the Pole, of the Polish character, and so on, 
the unity lying in the genus homo solely, for 
as happens with the bird species, the singing 
citizens of the air, there is a general likeness 
together with a specific difference. 

And it is in its composite character, arising 
from diversities of race, that music declares 
its place in modern forms of expression. 
The trend of development is toward the com- 
plex from the simple, and this is the manner 
of musical evolution. From the drum instru- 
mental inventions passed on to the creation 
of the violin, prince of instruments ; from 
the chant to choral unison ; from solo to 
symphony and all variations which respond 
to the ideals of the human spirit, so being 



MUSIC 303 

harmonious with those sympathies which, 
existing in the substances of the soul, are 
as susceptible as sand grains in the natural 
world, and which through strains of melody 
formulate themselves into expression. 

The modern composer of music, slipping 
from a personal mould of thought into im- 
personal, marshals and combines his tones as 
a strategist his military forces, all phases of 
the combination subordinate to the theme, 
— an operation that includes the least emo- 
tional science by including mathematics, 
while at the same time it is governed by the 
most intense emotion. Therefore music 
seems to be full of paradoxes. 

And the composer is often contradictory 
in the elements of his character. Perhaps 
there is no art that is more impressible by 
individuality, and compositions of the high- 
est order, although abstract and impersonal 
in theme, express the deeper reservations of 
feeling which are characteristic of the com- 
poser, while, if the composer is thus incor- 
porated in his work and the interiors of his 
soul mirrored, the effect upon his unwary au- 
ditor is no less marvelous, for that auditor's 
personal ideals are pushed to the summit of 



304 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

idolatry, the bewildering combinations o£ 
tone robbing bim of judgment, precipitating 
reason to the verge of desperation ; more- 
over, if he be timid he is made valiant, if 
cold-hearted he becomes a passionate lover, 
and so penetrating the centres of motives 
music revolutionizes his conduct. 

Such being the effect, tonal forces must 
be reckoned with as a means of the evolution 
of the human spirit, and happy is the com- 
poser who may inscribe his work " From heart 
to heart," the benedictory of Beethoven on 
his Messe Solennelle. 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 

The dance of man in the primitive cere- 
monial rite accords with a rhythm in those 
pulsations of the heart that harmonize with 
the upspringiug fountains of universal life. 
A mimic, he wheels with the sun from left to 
right, leaps as the deer, charges the air with 
his spear, each step in harmonious move- 
ment, and thus an unschooled actor he cele- 
brates the sources of life, his voice accom- 
panying each act in a praise chant, a 
fragmentary utterance extolling the gods of 
nature whose dwelling is in all voiceful 
things, — in glad rivers hastening to the sea ; 
in multitudinous leaves, those hving harps 
of myriad tones ; in clouds riven by " the 
truth speakers," whose intonations are fol- 
lowed by a flash of light ; in the small in- 
sects, those dainty instrumentahsts who, de- 
siring expression, in lieu of voices mvented 
cymbals, violins, and drums by means of struc- 



306 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

tural evolutions, — evolutions that through 
harmony of proportion increasingly empha- 
size godliness in the universe of things. 

But did this rhythm in the heart, these 
buoyant pulses that ruled the mimic move- 
ment, avail to produce melody in the archaic 
chant ? The voice loud with praise, was its 
utterances musical ? Was the chant tuneful, 
like the sound of rivulets threading the earth, 
of the song bird hymning at break of day ? 
On the contrary, the chant is but an expres- 
sion of fervid ambitions in which melody has 
no part, ambitions that lead to imitations of 
the cry of the eagle rather than the fluting 
of the thrush, an intonation in the voice that 
is heard in the call of birds of prey and in 
the roar of beasts of the forests, betraying 
the untamed ferocity of human nature at 
that epoch of primitive ceremonials when 
anthropomorphic worship was established, a 
worship self-laudatory and pervaded with an 
overtowering egoism together with pride in 
an increasinof intelliorence. 

But while the voice of worship lent itself 
to imitations of the harsh cries of birds and 
beasts of prey, the rhythmic step and circling 
movement had a tendency to train into bar- 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 307 

mony its tones, for there was an educative in- 
fluence in the accented charge of the spear, 
the leap and strike of foot, which, mould- 
ing the theme into measure, systematized the 
wild exclamations, modulating them into har- 
mony, and so establishing that choral unison 
which at last, as has been said, developed 
the musical forms which are the great gift 
to modern civilization. 

Human nature is no longer at antagonism 
with natural phenomena when yielding to its 
lessons of harmony ; and intractable as it 
showed itself in sentiment, and therefore in 
voice at the beginning, the mould of circum- 
stance closed about man, and by an inevitable 
law of development (his period of puberty 
transitional) from fierce cries he evolved tones 
that include the melody of birds and the 
richness of sound arising from the multi- 
tudinous voices of nature whose harmonious 
aggregate is only expressed through the 
tutored human voice. 

For it is in the educated voice that may 
be heard the tremolo of leaves, the flow of 
rivers, and the rhythm of the sea, — this 
being, however, an unconscious imitation 
which in a discriminate degree obtains in all 



308 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

animate life, and which finally developed 
accentuation together with modulation in 
speech among men. 

Delight in sound gained as the human 
spirit developed, and thence the evolution of 
verse, attention being paid first to expression 
through the chant particularly, since in wor- 
ship lies that higher intellectual activity 
wherein imagination is exercised and whence 
arose the sacred hymn, the ode to the gods, 
and finally the epic poem, each gradually 
trimmed to tuneful measure. And in this 
measure there is traceable the impulsions 
expressed by the rhythmic step of the cere- 
monial dance, those impulsions more deli- 
cate and addressed to an increased sensibihty 
to sound, a refinement together with charm 
of accentuation that finally became the tri- 
umph of modern poetic art. 

And this increased sensibihty to sound, it 
is well to consider, arose from love of rhythm, 
a rhythm that is founded in the movements 
of natural phenomena, — of the sun, whose 
journey from east to west and return was 
represented in the order of the ceremonial 
dance, to which golden orb the lyre was 
consecrated at last, Apollo assumed to be 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 309 

the author of sweet sounds, all nature's choir- 
ing awaiting his appearance at dawn. 

It was a sense of rhythm that gave to the 
myth and legend recited at the hearth-fire 
in the primeval tent its curious rise and fall, 
whence finally developed the office of the 
bard who chanted the same tales to the 
resounding strings of the harp, while to him 
was attributed an authority scarcely excelled 
by the actors in the sacred rites, for was he 
not the oracle of things felt but unseen ? 
Were not his tales concerning a ghostly world 
conceived to be inimical to an unconsecrated 
bearer of news thereof, so showing that he 
alone had immediate converse with the gods ? 
A seer, he prophesied ; a singer, he dispelled 
gloom ; a messenger from the Unseen Ones, 
the fold of the chieftain's tent was lifted 
at his approach ; he had entrance into the 
courts of Idngs ; to his voice the multitude 
listened as to the voice of a god. 

But the human voice is a perishable instru- 
ment. The tales dependent upon the bard's 
brief fife departed with his breath, and means 
were therefore invented to retain these tales, 
— means that addressed themselves princi- 
pally to the eye, and whence were developed 



310 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

those later inventions that make possible 
intercommunion without aid of oral speech. 
But the primary method of writing" was mi- 
metic, that is, all ideas were represented by 
imitations and pictography assumed the office 
of history, the rude pageant of rites and 
ceremonials being delineated, the chant, even, 
suggested through picture of instrument, at- 
titude of dancers, gesture of tutelar deity, 
and a sign of interlude, — a most ingenious 
tableau, as also a remarkable invention, — 
an invention betraying the persistency of ex- 
pression which governs mind, together with 
its aspirations for the perpetuation of its 
most prized ideas. And it is worthy of note 
that the evolution of this invention was ac- 
companied by the same assumptions as those 
held in the primitive rite. Imitations of 
objects by way of delineation were claimed 
to gain control of those objects, as imitation 
of the forces of nature gave control to the 
imitator, and thus each pictograph was an 
agent of unseen power, — as, for example, a 
pictograph representing a beetle in Egyptian 
sacred text was claimed to possess that -in- 
destructible force believed to animate the 
original, whose metamorphosis is nature's 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 311 

testimony to the inevitableness of form where 
life exists, testimony also to the continuity 
of both form and life. A pictograph, in fact, 
when consecrated to sacred usage was claimed 
to be a vehicle of psychic force supposed to 
dwell in the universe in its least as its great- 
est part, wherefore it was a magnet, as has 
been said, whose duplication formed a psychic 
battery, so to speak, which, applied to the 
purpose, revivified the dead, — as, for exam- 
ple, the electric storm was believed to revivify 
vegetal life, an idea on which the sages of 
Egyj)t not only based their demonstration 
of the immanence of the principle of life, but 
an idea whence obtained the sanctity of all 
writing and even of its author, on whom a 
restraint was laid to the extent of the forfeit- 
ure of life did he not record the " truth." 
And primitive as these notions, — assumed 
through a belief that there is potency in 
form to compel the induction of life, — they 
did not vanish in the advance of knowledge, 
whence the formulas of sacred text inscribed 
on mausoleums of the dead, these formulas 
claimed to be imbued with power to protect 
the inmates from the second death (death of 
the soul-seedy the nehula, core of being). 



312 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

And hence the custom of pronouncing an 
anathema as also a blessing in a sacred text, 
the letter of the text even assumed to have a 
bHghting or a saving influence, — a notion 
which is difficult to condemn since the con- 
tent of a word is thought, and its " spirit 
maketh alive, while the letter killeth," a state- 
ment that illustrates the penetrative genius 
of the author's mind. It is St. Paul who 
declares that duality of being taught by 
the Egyptian sages, affirming that man pos- 
sesses two bodies, the one terrestrial the 
other celestial. 

Prior to the apostle's era, however, Moses, 
erstwhile pupil of the priests of Egypt and 
experiencing how readily ideality falls into 
idolatry, on escaping the country of his nur- 
ture, demanded of his people a suppression 
of objective worship, a figuration of things 
unseen through imagery therefore forbidden, 
the Hebrew lawgiver thus showing a know- 
ledge of the pitfall of hteralism, — a literal- 
ism that would exalt even the sacred scrip- 
ture into a fetich. 

This wisdom in matters of far-reaching 
importance is a significant illustration of the 
understanding of the Hebrew apostles and 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 313 

leaders. And it is in Hebraic literature where 
is first emphasized a sense of the effect o£ 
poetic expression, there being a peculiar 
rhythmic trend in this ancient scripture. 0£ 
Solomon's Song, an apotheosis of nature, 
it may be said that there is a lyric note 
which contrasts with the ancient chant in 
voicing the joyousness in nature. In the 
Psalms the flow of feeling is of a deeper cur- 
rent, and more majestic while at the same 
time as rhythmic, — for did not David dance 
to the stroke of the resounding harp as he 
sang ? 

Sound was unwillingly yielded to the 
silent letter, and the ancient author sought 
means to make vocal the written word, 
accent and shrewd points inviting thought 
to implied tone. It is of curious interest to 
note the complicated means resorted to by 
the Chinese in order to demonstrate intona- 
tion. The Chinese language, indeed, is a 
complex invention, its structure puzzling the 
student as the structure of tropical flora. 
But that necessity for entire expression laid 
upon the human heart has introduced 
rhythm into all forms of writing, that of 
the Chinese, the Egyptian, and the Hebrew, 



314 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

also of the Hindu, where the use of rhythm 
is most suofo-estive as in the sono;s of the 
Rik, these songs possessing the sentiment and 
genius of the people, and where is that com- 
mon appeal to nature that is like the spon- 
taneous outburst of caroling birds, or the 
tuneful flow of multitudinous rivers, charac- 
teristics found in those unparalleled epics, 
Mahabharata and the Ramayana, these in- 
cluding songs, ballads, histories, nursery 
tales, philosophical and religious treatises, 
and even o-enealosries. all in metrical verse. 
Covering centuries of development, these 
Hindu verses are an assurance of the trend 
of thought toward musical utterance, a re- 
cognition of power in tone which augured 
the birth of the musical art as well as de- 
claring the perpetuity of poetry. 

Poetic measure is visible harmony, and in 
all inspired wor,ds there is a tonal effect, the 
letters themselves a keyboard to imagination, 
while points of accent are a substitute to the 
interpretive measure, being in the highest 
forms of prose like a musical annotation. 

In brief, it was by points of accent, by mea- 
sure, by tonal letters, that the human s^airit, 
cognizant of the antagonism raised by inhar- 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 315 

monious sound, sought harmony of expres- 
sion. 

The ceremonial chant of primitive man is 
the first product of the human intellect ap- 
plied to expression by means of language in 
which imagination begins to assert its con- 
trol. And this form of expression at an 
early epoch was marshaled into measure, 
exclamations and interludes succeeding each 
other resulting in a rhythm which at a later 
period became one of the principal elements 
of poetical composition, an element that dic- 
tated the terse elegance of the Hebraic 
Psalms, the perspicuity of Homeric verse, 
and the melodious measure of the " Divina 
Commedia." For rhythm, increasing their 
import, limits the overflow of words, so giving 
depth of meaning to language as is increased 
the depth of a stream by rigorous bounda- 
ries. And as the primitive chant and hymn 
addressed to divine personalities (those psy- 
chic forces governing natural phenomena) 
were intended for all, the appeal to all, they 
were vocal with common emotion. As the 
chant so the folk-lore recited in the seclusion 
of habitations less admirable than the dwell- 
ings of beasts. Voicing sentiments at an age 



316 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

when the ideal and real were indistinguish- 
able, actual and imaginary events equally 
true, this curious lore is testimony of the 
trend of an evolution which, beginning in the 
lower animate world, continues in human na- 
ture, that trend an increasing manifestation 
of psychic power which in man is marked by 
an effort at its interpretation. For folk-lore 
is an exponent of that epoch when intelli- 
gence grappled with its environment to the 
end of wresting explanation of human con- 
ditions and limitations, that intelligence im- 
mature and credulous. And it is this lore 
which is basis of the epic, its crudities shorn 
away by the pruning hand of those repre- 
sentative men who have successively risen 
in the advance of tardy civilization, their ap- 
pearance prophetic of the possibilities of the 
race and of human nature. The poems of 
Homer, for instance, are an accretion of 
folk-lore set to noble verse, his Iliad a mirror 
of human nature at the point of escape from 
more primitive state, a state representatively 
shown by Hebraic tales of bloodshed as 
in the wars of Jab, and in which pride of 
precedence covers itself with a mantle of 
loyalty to a tutelar deity, a sentiment distin- 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 317 

guislimg the early Hebraic race from the 
Hellenic in its fierceness of animosity toward 
the deity of an enemy, denunciation and ob- 
loquy being heaped upon the god of the foe. 
And this arrogance was a heritage whence 
arose the tragedy of the world, the crucifix- 
ion of Christ. Intolerance of opinion does 
not characterize Hellenic literature as He- 
braic, and in Homer there is a comprehen- 
sive grasp of the universal, a sense of the 
oneness of human nature, that gives a peren- 
nial interest to his works. And while he 
represents the savagery of man by an Achil- 
les sulking with chagrin in his tent, or roused 
hke a wounded lion, which without distinc- 
tion destroys all in its path. Homer discloses 
through Hector the gentler passions of men. 
Pausing on the way to tales of hiunan slaugh- 
ter, he rehearses a scene of human tender- 
ness; shows as in a vista the sweetness of 
love contrasting later with the ferocity of 
hate. This scene, the parting of Hector from 
Andromache and Astyanax, is an episode im- 
possible to the life of unawakened sensibili- 
ties : betraying the sources of civilization, it 
gives a lasting grace to a poem whose themes 
are too often representative of the uncurbed 



318 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

and bestial instinct o£ war, scenes of which 
are portrayed with an evident dehght in the 
theme. And it is when the human spirit is 
undeveloped and in control of ferocious pas- 
sions that it finds pleasure in reenacting in 
imaorination deeds whose sole excuse is that 
sudden impulse to ferocity as unpremeditated 
by man as by the lower animals. 

Representative of the sentiments of his 
age, Homer's poems betray the trend of 
human nature when uninfluenced by lofty 
ideals. Records of war are a reminder of 
that early instinct that prompted the inven- 
tion of the tomahawk, and the subsequent 
invention of the flute is often forgotten, the 
one an implement of bloodshed, the other 
an instrument voicing love. It is the flute 
that augured the advent of civilization, re- 
presenting the tie that builds the home, 
the bulwark of the nation. Its thrushlike 
strains were the evidence of an evolution 
that should give birth to lyric verse, that 
form of expression that is the song element 
in folk-lore, and which gave a soft, rhythmi- 
cal flow to the voice of the wild mother 
crooning to her infant in its osier cradle 
swung to a leafy bough — an element heard 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 319 

in the murmur of woodland wooing and 
which pervades the verse of Robert Burns's 
love songs. 

The lyric is founded on elemental emotions 
whose spontaneity marks their likeness to 
the emotions of animate life, emotions that 
have their source in love, the principle of 
life. Lyric must be the choiring voices of 
souls, and it is a veritable vision that ima- 
gines the songs of seraphs attuned to the lyre, 
for the glad pulses of human nature are in 
sympathy with the lighter measure, whence 
the elastic foot of troops of dancing Vestals 
in days of eld. Bidden by joyous impulses, 
the rapid foot followed by inweaving arms, 
the wheel and turn obedient as stars in 
their orbit, a living constellation, the Vestal 
dance was a visible melody prefiguring the 
lyric metre as the epic is reverberant of the 
more primitive dance. 

The effect of lyric verse is shown by con- 
trast, and particularly in the drama where 
there is harmonic measure, a cadence follow- 
ing the defiling lines like the step of mar- 
shaling men ; for here if suddenly a change 
is made, and the theme breaks into lyric 
verse, the pulse of the reader quickens his 



320 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

imagination on wing with tlie writer. A 
method used by all dramatists, the introduc- 
tion of the lyric into blank verse is especially 
noteworthy in the works of the two great 
dramatic poets of English literature, Shake- 
speare and Browning. Shakespeare's atti- 
tude toward human nature is like that of a 
musician with his score, for his ear, open to 
the affinities that are the keyboard of human 
destiny, hears the tumultuous throes of pas- 
sion, despair, and hope. But, unlike the Hel- 
lenic dramatists, Shakespeare gave witness to 
lighter and more joyous side of life. Note 
the exuberant joyousness of Ariel. Repre- 
senting the unrebukable instinct for play in 
all natural life, the delight of ephemera in 
the dance at setting sun, the clumsy froHc 
of the bear's cub, the inconsequent tumblings 
of the lion's whelp, Shakespeare's Ariel is a 
symbol of all jocund nature restive under the 
yoke of labor, suggesting her cheery flocks 
in air and field at blossoming tide of the 
year. It is a sprite only to be conjured up 
in opulent youth, and by the poet of Avon, 
with the optimistic heart of a boy. Shake- 
speare did not set about admiring nature 
patronizingly ; on the contrary, he shows an 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 321 

affinity to all natural phenomena, whence 
the unstudied outbreak of Ariel's song : — 

" Where the bee sucks there suck I ; 
In a cowslip's bell I lie: " 

the lilting lightness of which is Hke a swal- 
low's dash and swing. 

This freshness is characteristic of Shelley's 
" Skylark," and could only come from a heart 
which, susceptible to the wordless melodies of 
nature, had never been estranged from their 
influence. 

It was the habit of primeval man to as- 
cribe similar passions to the clouds, to the 
wind, and to the bird, as those governing 
himself, and later a liberal pantheism prevails 
in all poetic interpretation of nature. Indeed, 
pantheism is fundamental to human expres- 
sion through art or language. And true of 
pantheism, true also of polytheism, since im- 
personation is necessary to presentation of 
the higher visions of the poet. The prophet 
is he who impersonates his dream, and it is a 
traditional adherence to the methods of the 
seer whereby Shakespeare won place. A 
liberality of judgment and a comprehensive 
grasp of the springs of human nature, to- 
gether with a rare and delicate understand- 



322 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

ing that " He maketh all hearts alike," even 
the " heart of the weed " being akin to the 
heart of man, is shown in Shakespeare's 
early poems. And, his boyhood passed in 
Ariel-like freedom from intellectual restraint, 
the poet matured without loss of that breadth 
of sympathy which the overbending skies 
and intimacy with nature breeds in human 
nature when in its native integrity. This is 
apparent in the free swing of his rhythm, the 
unconscious lilt in his songs, the steady 
movement in his sonnets. Impossible to a 
poet nurtured among beetling roofs and 
smoke-stained skies, this freedom in form of 
expression characterizes the poet of nature. 
But Shakespeare was more : he was the poet 
of human nature, a lover of his kind, and 
therefore he might not remain a sonnet- 
maker only, nor trim his fancies to the lyre, 
— it was the necessity of his genius that he 
should become a dramatist. 

The primitive rite was the first drama, and 
as in Egypt a drama of the gods of life. 
Moreover, it is in the contrast between the 
later and early mimicry, the incipient and the 
matured drama, that is perceived the great 
sweep of the evolution of human intelligence. 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 323 

From the invention of the one indeed, to the 
evolution o£ the other the arc is wide ! 

In the beginning all interest was concen- 
trated on perpetuity of life here or hereafter, 
the instincts of lower animate hfe in active 
exercise, but in the development of mental- 
ity these instincts became less the motifs 
of invention. Men began to look into each 
other's faces and to read their records. Less 
self-involved, they developed new sentiments 
and ideas, these in effect burning away the 
sheaths of outward show and disclosing the 
kernel of truth lying within. And it is im- 
possible not to give profound thought the 
dignity of measured sentences, for the ideals 
of the human spirit come by way of rhythmic 
utterance, while it is equally impossible to im- 
agine great moral truth delivered in a harsh 
and discordant voice. So g'eneral is the idea 
of a sweet voice as an accompaniment to 
words of wisdom, a harsh enunciation shocks 
the ear. Does not imagination give to the 
Christ a voice full and sweet ? 

Who has not longed to hear the Beatitudes 
(in which every sentence is a milestone for 
the developing soul) as they were spoken by 
the Master? 



324 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

The best specimen of human speech has a 
cadence closely allied to poetry, and the best 
examples of prose are easily versified, while 
oratory is most effective when it rises into 
metrical intonations. Furthermore, rhythm 
is an aid to memory, for doubtless the tena- 
city with which myths and legends have held 
sway through centuries of unwritten record 
came through its magical powers to limn 
scenes and sentiment upon the tablets of 
memory. And to this power is due the stable 
hold that folk-lore has maintained in the 
annals of music as in literature, proving that 
rhythm may be claimed to be no less a part 
of human nature's equipment to insure ex- 
pression than is the power of song to bii-ds. 
Whence it happens that ideas, if fledgelings 
of an early brood, must needs pipe and flute 
to cadence as insects in the sedges, and 
later, when imagination holds a more com- 
prehensive sway, sentiments that are the con- 
centrated expression of human experience 
find in poetry and song the most adequate 
means of address to the hearts of men. 

But as the imasres of the mind became com- 
plex difiiculties arose that had not occurred 
in the singleness of purpose and simplicity of 



RHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 325 

apprehension when the chant, hymn, and 
epic arose, and blank verse, or even the lyric, 
not sufficino" for that marriage of tone and 
thought which is derived from those increased 
sensibihties that gave birth to music, the 
multifarious forms of verse now in usage 
were introduced. An amplification of means 
whereby the poet discovers the human soul 
to the world, with all its kaleidoscopic varia- 
tion of feeling, these forms came to be an 
illustration of greater or less versatility, just 
as the varied cadenza of a song bird declares 
his surpassing proficiency in the art in which 
his species is not the sole competitor. 

Mention has been made of Shakespeare's 
habit of breaking through the customary 
plainness of his verse with a carol, but Shake- 
speare did not amplify his form of verse, — 
he adhered most confidently to stately blank 
verse ; for he was and ever remained master 
of this form. Even in use of the sonnet it 
appears that his genius reserved itself for the 
greater freedom found in less arbitrary mea- 
sures. This is not true, however, of Brown- 
ing, whose flow of measure breaks up into 
a cataract of changeful rhythm that is rever- 
berant of novel thought. 



326 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Unlike Shelley, Browning is seldom en- 
meshed in metre, attracted by euphony for 
its own sake. Browning, indeed, resembles 
none other than himself, and his verse, often 
overladen with meaning to the exclusion of 
proportion and melody, must be judged apart 
from poetry whose form of metre gives grace 
to a sentiment lacking in weight. But while 
no trimmer, he could finish his verse to a 
nicety when desirous to do so, and if, caught 
and carried forward by his rhymes, he may 
be accused of redundancy. Browning seldom 
expressed himself unworthily, for it is evi- 
dent that he realized his high commission as 
a bard. 

Browning increased breadth of expression 
by his ingenious application of earlier meth- 
ods of versification, assuming early and late 
forms with equal facility, and it is in his vo- 
luminous verse that may be seen the continu- 
ity of methods of expression, once invented, 
while, as in this illustrious example, there 
is an evidence that a form of verse at any 
time invented is certain to live. The chant 
still remains, and as an adjunct to cere- 
monial worship ; the hymn is still the means 
of address to divinity ; and the epic retains 



EHYTHM IN LANGUAGE 327 

its place, notwithstanding the development 
of those new forms, the ode, the lyric, and 
the sonnet. 

It is in the continuity of methods of ex- 
pression as shown by retention of all forms 
of verse used by tutored and untutored man 
that is betrayed the complex quahty of hu- 
man nature in its more advanced stag-e of 
development. Moreover, in the ampHfication 
of means of expression is shown the ten- 
dency of the human mind to growth, this in 
effect indorsing the theory that not only is 
the soul like a plant, but that its growth is 
not limited to the present life, its full expan- 
sion in a less limited sphere. 

And gauged by the evolution from the 
primitive intelhgence evinced by the senti- 
ments of the ceremonial rites and that intelli- 
gence that demands for expression not alone 
the chant, but the hymn, the epic, the ode, 
the lyric, and the sonnet, with aU other minor 
amplifications of metre, the development of 
immortals may only be represented as in 
Egyptian scripture, by the evolution of suns 
in the sidereal heavens, for conception fails 
of its understanding except by an approxi- 
mate image such as is offered by natural 



328 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

phenomena. In natural phenomena there is 
a mirror of the human soul, human nature 
being in truth the summary of the visible 
universe, wherefore in plant, animal, and the 
stars it finds itself reflected. It is the evo- 
lution of these diverse forms that is the 
prophecy which was read by the forward 
genius of various races heirs apparent to the 
growing mentahty of humanity, these stal- 
wart minds representative of the possibili- 
ties of intellectual growth here as hereafter. 
For of the human race it may be expected 
that its averaofe will rise to the level of the 
representative and highest single example, 
educative influences unchecked. 



XI 

LrTERATUIlE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 

As has been said, the history of literature 
begins at the epoch of primitive ceremonials, 
hence its earliest record is a deHneation of 
the ceremonial by an assemblage of picto- 
graphs, for here is given an interpretation of 
the sentiments of the chant through pictures 
that are images of ideas. This imagery was 
transformed into signs and so finally incor- 
porated in a written language. Thus in the 
very tap-root of words nature is revealed as 
the governing force of linguistic expression, 
for the pictograph was a delineation of some 
natural object conceived to express through 
its characteristic traits an idea, that idea 
when spoken embodied in a word. 

And language so derived became poetic. 
Moreover, in as far as poetry is orderly in its 
structure and admirable in its presentation 
of truth it is the natural expression of hu- 
man nature. It has been related how man 



330 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

chanted his thoughts, sang his adorations in 
hymns, and rehearsed his experiences in those 
folk-songs in which fancy clothed expression 
by means of natural imagery; but the first 
speech of man testifies to that imagination, 
evoked by nature's object lessons, that dis- 
tinguishes him from lower animals, — an im- 
agination which at length generated noble 
sympathies, providing a trustworthy percep- 
tion of the true, beautiful, and good. To 
natural objects, to the visible embodiment of 
God, the children of men owe their training 
in expression, environment dictating its form. 
It was environment that gave strenuous force 
to the Latin language, copiousness to the 
Hellenic tongue, and tropical redundancy to 
the Oriental ; while among tribal races as 
in the Americas, North and South, the influ- 
ence of environment is obvious, for in these 
dialects there is evidence of emotions called 
up by objects admirable or otherwise, this 
shown even in the intonations required in 
pronunciation of names given those objects. 
Influencing speech, locality effected that 
racial divergency of expression which is 
found in literature and art, whence the 
homogeneity of folk-songs among Germanic 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 331 

peoples, these songs having one cradle, 
whence also the difficulties of the translator, 
the surprised acclamation when appears a gen- 
ius so comprehensive as to capture the ignes 
fatui in foreign idiosyncrasy of expression 
testifying to those difficulties. 

Specialization of form of expression is 
opposed to universalism, and literature, being 
subject to immediate environment, is a less 
comprehensive medium of expression of the 
ideal than music, for similar tones are every- 
where, the expression of similar emotions, — 
a fact that determines the qualification of 
music to be an interpreter of human nature 
in its most elusive recesses, an interpreter 
that shall be a revelation of the absolute 
principle governing life. 

A people's literature bearing the impress 
of its origin provides both thought and 
methods of expression which the linguist 
seeks to interpret, and it is the able lin- 
guist who promotes reciprocity of national 
sentiment, even though that sentiment is 
deeply imbedded in national life, so partak- 
ing of its special genius. But that linguist 
who confers this benefit is born such, his 
service intuitional and unteachable ; of him it 



332 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

may not be said that he is sunk in a bog of 
literalism, a disaster common to the philolo- 
gist but not to the poet. 

The poet is brother to the musician, both 
being tone-masters and each endowed with 
the so-called sixth sense that overleaps the 
boundaries of circumstance entering the 
arcanum of thought, and it is of interest 
to note the influence which the sphere of 
their development has upon the character of 
diverse literary products. 

Is it possible to conceive a Homeric poem 
where the engirdling sea and towering 
mountain is not found ? Dante is eloquent 
of vast heights and impenetrable glooms ex- 
perienced among the Alps. French litera- 
ture is the essence of varied plain, stream, 
mountain, and sea, concrete and pervasive, 
alchemized in the nurtured French spirit 
and there mirrored. Moliere, De Lisle, Sully, 
Prudhomme, and the rest, together with 
those innumerable lyrists whose verse was 
first heard in the south in the carols of the 
troubadours, declare the influence of varied 
scenery. 

Germany's Hterature where most indige- 
nous gives evidence of inclosure, its expres- 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 333 

sion concrete, excessive idealism thrusting 
itself upward, craving breadth, and finding 
it where there is always room ! Intolerant 
of insularity, England compassed the world 
in a Shakespeare. And it is the voice of 
the poet which is heard in the literatures 
of these countries, characterizing them, for 
he is interpreter of the spirit of the people. 
Does not the stirring of profound national 
emotion demand a national hymn ? 

The ideal in literature, as in painting and 
sculpture, is content only with harmony. 

The human spirit moulds its outward 
shape, discarding disproportion and ugliness ; 
its final expression is harmonious, for truth 
demands a rhythmic embodiment, as loveli- 
ness of soul, beauty of voice ; therefore in 
obedience to a similar law in all countries 
where literature is developed a bard is born 
whose rhythmic annunciations pulsate with 
the heart of his people, the national senti- 
ment gauged by the poet. 

One of the evidences of advanced cul- 
ture is a sweet voice, and the peoples of 
the world's oldest civilization are remarkable 
for gentle modulations in speech which the 
younger races find difficult to imitate. It 



334 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

is evident that as these elder nations pre- 
served their lore in form of verse, tone was 
cultivated by way of recitation, this influ- 
ence, combined with constant association 
with nature, preventing the development of 
harsh voices, such as are not uncommon 
among the Anglo-Saxon, the builder of 
those great cities and their accompanying 
railways whose bruit excites activity, de- 
stroying meditation, — an activity that in 
the United States, were it not for its noise, 
mio;ht well be likened to that of an ant-hill. 
But notwithstanding the tumult of a new 
world in the process of building, even in its 
crude beginning here and there an under- 
current of calm persistent seriousness has 
given evidence of hidden springs where the 
souls of men were seeking to slake their 
thirst for truth. 

This is evident in the verse of the eldest 
of our poets, William Cullen Bryant, though 
it must be added that his rhyme has a sug- 
gestion of transportation — something of the 
elegance of Macaulay, whose writings are 
characterized by less spontaneity than pol- 
ish, for emotion in Bryant's verse does not 
control the form. Mould and chisel it, as 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 335 

Michael Angelo's chisel mastered even the 
insensate marble, the form, on the contrary, 
shapes the emotion — an abnormal condition, 
for emotion predicated upon the will (which 
is fundamental to all formulation) should 
compel poetic measure to respond to its need. 

Restraint is evident even in Bryant's most 
inspired poems. In " Robert of Lincoln," 
"The Fringed Gentian," and "Death of 
the Flowers," where are attractive grace and 
delicacy of perception together with a Words- 
worthian charm of phraseology, there is little 
evidence of warmth of feeling ; the glow is 
not of summer, but of early spring. The 
writer does not seem to be intoxicated with 
the beauty he describes. Bryant's poem, 
" To a Waterfowl," while showing a sense 
of the suggestiveness of winged aquatic life, 
is incomparably inferior to Shelley's " Sky- 
lark," for in this poem Shelley's rhythm is 
the rhythm of palpitating bird life, his mea- 
sure, obedient to the lark's melody outpour- 
ing at the gate of day, an inspiration from 
nature as veritably on the part of the poet 
as the bird. 

The inconsequent mind of Shelley was 
nearer the forces intuitional in animate life 



336 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

than the many poets who, like Bryant, were 
deeply susceptible to what the broad skies 
and forest shades contain, and therefore the 
spontaneity of his verse. 

It may be predicated that when a poet 
willingly becomes a translator of another 
poet's verse his genius is not an overpower- 
ing force, individual and autocratic, and 
when Bryant gave to the world his Iliad and 
Odyssey, he declared his minority among 
the world's poets. Great as was his gift to 
the world, and as lofty the seat among the 
learned which was thereby gained, this ad- 
mirable translation assigfued to our eminent 
American poet the place of an interpreter of 
another's thought rather than an interpreter 
of universal truth — and true of Bryant, 
equally true of Longfellow, translator of the 
" Divina Commedia." Greatness of intellect, 
forcibleness of emotion, are not compatible 
with the labors of a translator; and when 
these two poets laid their shields at the feet 
of the masters of Hellenic and Italian epic 
verse they declared what is evident in their 
poetry, — a sympathy for a poet's mission, a 
sense of song, but also that not of such 
poets are made " liberating gods," theirs not 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 337 

the illuminating torch of the bard. Facility 
of expression is common to each as the 
dignity of sincerity of feeling, but they 
had not the fecund genius of the lyrist, 
they might not grasp the wand borne from 
afar by the minnesingers as did Shelley. 
The minnesinger could neither read nor 
write, but these poets, Bryant and Longfel- 
low, were scholarly men who sang as Patti 
sings, not as the bobolink or the Virginian 
red-bird. Human nature ran riot in the trou- 
badour chanson, and the Provengal rounde- 
lay had a charm derived from the clime of 
southern France, immediate environment en- 
forcing itself upon the verse, though, it must 
be added, the habit of song was primarily 
derived from customs habitual to the race 
when roaming the plains of Asia, where all 
literature was poetry. But environment, ac- 
cidental, as it were, is not impressed upon 
the early American poet's verse, for it might 
have been written in England with slight 
change of phraseology. True of Bryant's 
verse, true of Longfellow's. In Longfellow's 
" Hiawatha " there is the rare sympathy that 
is found in imaginative minds, as also a sense 
of the musical grace in measure that is as 



338 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

frequently an endowment of the master of 
diction in prose writing as that of the poet ; 
but the poem is without dramatic power, and 
that, too, where ample subject is provided. 
It is evident that the poet had known the 
Indian race throuo;h the vista of others' ex- 
periences only ; and although a poem is con- 
ceivable that is full of the strenuous vitality 
of an unenslavable race, terse, and rugged 
with episode of battle and amour, " Hia- 
watha " is not such with all its attractiveness 
and grace. Of gentle humor is Longfellow, 
well housed and well born, his muse too highly 
bred for those American wilds which needs 
must be fertile of native genius ; an English 
rose transplanted, British currents of thought 
swept away immediate influences, the brain 
of this scion of English stock, as that of Bry- 
ant, bearing impress of Old England. And 
of most of the early brood of songsters that 
New England hatched this may be said. 

Whittier, however, in choice of subject 
often gives currency to the feeling that he 
had the impress of the New World upon his 
sheath of song. His " Snow-Bound," in 
metaphor, in description, and selection of 
metre, has a flavor of new, rather than old 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 339 

Englisli life. The skill of movement in pre- 
sentation of theme is derived from something 
personal in the nature of this poet that sug- 
gests spontaneity, his verse, unartificial, giv- 
ing a sense of the simplicity of the elder 
bards, and as with them most characteristic 
when the theme is the most personal. 

Enlisting all hearts by a poet's intense ad- 
vocacy of freedom applied in no narrow 
boundaries of caste or color, it appeared 
as his genius ripened that Whittier's was a 
fitting voice for the spirit of our New World 
ethics, the key, sympathy with human nature, 
unlocking his treasury of rhyme, his interpre- 
tation of nature less vivid. And when his 
theme was actuated by a sense of wrong his 
verse became molten ; like quicksilver, it 
ran white and glowing. 

In his " Barbara Frietchie " the placid 
Quaker is a dramatist, betraying that if he 
loved the sequestered life of nature his soul 
caught fire at human exigency, a response 
to which lifted his voice above the platitudes 
that, if they must be uttered, are better 
given in prose. The inspiration of these 
themes, subjects suited to the generous im- 
pulses of his nature, drew him away from 



340 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

tlie scholarly groves of song wherein Bry- 
ant tuned his lyre. It is suggestive of his 
individuality that although human need or 
wrong inspired his song as these themes had 
touched the tender heart of Shelley, they 
gave a clarion note to his verse, while their 
effect enfeebled that of the English poet. 
Shelley's mental habitudes of mind were 
those of the pantheist, and Whittier's of the 
Christian, narrow perhaps, hut direct and 
passionate. Distinctly ethical, he is there- 
fore representative of that people who had 
exiled themselves to establish a theocracy, — 
a republic of opinion, — this, if need be, 
maintained by the sword. Nurtured in opin- 
ions outspoken and aggressive, Whittier is in 
consequence a representative poet of America, 
and an example of the influence of surround- 
ing circumstances. Moreover, while loving 
his kind most, it must not be denied that he 
had delight in nature which prompted at 
leisure hour as noteworthy expression as 
that of the poet cloistered at Rydal Mount. 
Thus with an equipment of intense sympa- 
thy for the wronged and a sensibility to the 
charms of nature, together with circumstances 
that enlisted his patriotism, it might have 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 341 

been expected that Whittier would have given 
to the New World a national hymn. 

The hymn is a form of expression which 
forbids the abstract and impersonal ; it must 
thrill with the personal, and, that which is 
essential and most characteristic of human 
nature, adoration and passionate love. A 
religious hymn is coherent with singleness of 
sentiment, and its history shows that the 
more human the god whose praise is cele- 
brated, the more godlike the poet, his inspi- 
ration through communion of spirit with 
Him who is spirit and truth. These enthu- 
siasms of the hour are the heritage of the 
human spirit ; potentially they existed in 
primeval man as the form of the plant exists 
in the seed. And, therefore, the religious 
hymn expresses a universal sentiment, a sen- 
timent that has no local genesis. On the 
contrary, the national hymn is born of special 
conditions, such as were to outward seeming 
at hand when Whittier's muse was most 
eloquent of themes laden with patriotism, — 
themes neither abstract nor impersonal, and 
which seemed but the advance expression 
which at last would coalesce into an immortal 
praise-offering, voicing the sentiments that 



342 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

came forth in the broken phrases of the 
*^ Hymn to America," and later in the few 
stanzas of the "Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
lic," sentiments which his uncoveted activity 
in public life indorsed but which his muse 
failed to sing. And because of this failure 
on the part of a representative poet when so 
many conditions were favorable it is appar- 
ent that a national hymn is not a product 
of the accomplished poet, but its origin is in 
a crystallization of common thought whose 
outcropping may be found where expression 
by verse is rare and among the unpracticed 
and illiterate, the national bard a product of 
the "plain people," whence the sinews of the 
state. It is thus the history of the evolution 
of the actuahzation of the ideal repeats itself, 
spontaneity of expression, untutored and un- 
schooled, bearing off the laurel, having suc- 
cessfully competed with an acknowledged 
oracle even, through closeness of heart to 
the secret springs of nature. 

The poets of New England were all patriot 
poets, distinguished for their unsleeping loy- 
alty, while few can claim that most enviable 
quality which distinguishes a national poet, a 
quaHty that would declare an unmistakable 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 343 

nativity. James Russell Lowell prophesies 
in the setting of his foreign-derived theme, 
" The Vision of Sir Launfal," — this being 
New England scenes and clime, — the coming 
of an American muse whose far-off voice is 
now echoed in Southern and Western song. 
But Emerson leads these pipers on their 
native heath, clearing from the way a rout 
of transatlantic English poets in an imperial 
security that is only possible when genius is 
loyal to the country of its birth. 

A poet's species is discoverable by com- 
parison, and Emerson is discriminated by 
means of contrast to Tennyson, the latter 
more often found singing behind carefully 
trimmed hedgerows, the former far afield, 
his hmit the horizon. The personahty of 
Tennyson was austere, genial to a chosen few 
and those who acknowledged his high plane. 
An intellectual aristocrat even in his broad 
grasp of human feeling, his verse is aca- 
demic when rich with depth of sentiment. 
Emerson was hospitable to the extent of 
forgetf ulaess of himself. To all whose love 
of truth was patent his large heart opened, 
and that artisan hand, characteristic of his 
stock, grasped the seeking visitor's palm 



344 NATURE AND HUMAN NATUEE 

reassuringly. Tennyson dwelt upon the in- 
dividual charm of his thought, forgetting his 
reticence to illustrate it, his manner suggest- 
ing a claim to primogeniture in the art of 
poetry, so exhibiting a personal triumph at 
a happy expression of the ideal, while Emer- 
son beamed at the development of a truth, 
forgetting his own authorship and regarding 
a new idea as a chip from the Absolute hable 
to fly off at any application of the chisel of 
human reason, — his or his neighbors, — so 
establishing a copartnership with humanity 
in search of truth. He had, however, a 
Buddhistic self-poise, a keen sense of per- 
sonal privilege in choice of spiritual viands, 
this individual decision making intrusion im- 
possible. And his amiable courtesy often 
hedged him about as completely as the hau- 
teur of Tennyson repelled unwelcome espion- 
age. A scion of a north country baron of 
Old England, there was a tradition of rank 
in the American poet's attitude equally with 
assurances of fellowship, these traits in a 
peculiar manner suggesting a stalwart main- 
tainer of a republic where brain is the House 
of Peers, where " a man 's a man," and much 
after the heart of Robert Burns, — a poet 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 345 

blighted through exile from nature owing to 
lack of wisdom such as prompted our New 
World poet to retreat from ^' the proud 
world " to his native heather, there to carol 
uninterruptedly, rejoicing as a poet may in 
the infinite flow of hfe and the perpetuity of 
a beauty that " needs no excuse for being." 

Emerson's retirement was bidden by an 
instinct of self-preservation, for a close con- 
tact with his kind was likely to despoil him 
of that serenity whose grace was his chief 
characteristic. He must look at human na- 
ture with the landscaj)ist's vision, its grosser 
features transfigured in the sphere of inspi- 
ration and prophecy. 

A poet is a priest, his people of the inner 
realm, and whom he meets soul to soul while 
traversing the unseen. The poet's benedic- 
tion is pronounced in the solitudes, not in 
cities, or where stri\dng multitudes congre- 
gate ; for at touch of barbed front of hu- 
man emulation the most amiable poet turns 
savage, or, like Edgar Poe and Robert Burns, 
dissolute, a despair chilling their souls, hope 
withered Hke an orchid by the touch of frost, 
— a danger Emerson fled, the proof of his 
wisdom shown by the added calm of his spirit. 



346 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Moreover, he had that in him that repelled 
bondage, and therefore the rules of verse 
were often ignored, this disincHnation to the 
restraints of measure showing that his was an 
independent spirit recking Httle of academic 
rule, so contrasting with Tennyson's delight 
in metrical finish, this giving a musical rmg 
to his song as sweet as the flow of a moun- 
tain rivulet. 

It has been an occasion of criticism that 
Emerson should lend his influence to Whit- 
man's installation among the poets ; but what- 
ever may be said of the latter poet's strenuous 
verse (in which it were desirable to weed out 
an audacity of mistaken candor), there was in 
the disposition of the former a similar manful 
audacity, the spirit of the man aroused, for 
Emerson possessed a fearlessness in speech 
whose armed irony, though sheathed m cour- 
tesy, did not fail of its mark. Neither poet 
feared to speak the truth, while both were 
constant in deriding sham ; moreover, the 
earnestness of the " good gray poet " was as 
fervent as the sincerity of the seer. Thence 
the recognition by the elder of the younger 
poet in that famous visit when it happened 
that counsel was given and rejected — re- 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS 347 

jected because o£ insensibility to the dignity 
of reserve, an excess of naturalness savoring 
of that brawn and muscle out of which human 
nature is lifting itself, luring the then youth- 
ful poet to extravagances which betray a fore- 
shortened sight. 

However, when averse criticism has done 
its utmost, Whitman will stand where the 
kindly hand of Emerson designated his place. 
His verse is vigorous, and but to read " 
Captain, My Captain," is to acknowledge in 
him a bard worthy our young new world of 
letters, in which, be it added, maudlin verse 
has no place, nor in truth that tribe of infu- 
soria with too httle substance to be opaque 
and whose vagaries are often weak solutions 
of minor English poets. 

Intuition of the balance and rhythm neces- 
sary to verse is inherited by man and there- 
fore a common possession ; but language is 
less an intuition than an acquired possession, 
and it is the limitation of language that se- 
cures permanency to tonal expression, tone 
alone thus being an avenue to the spirit, 
whence the word becomes a living thing, 
apprehended and assimilated. 

Discrimmation in use of words gains as the 



348 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

sense of tone is more or less acute, whence it 
happens that the poet's vocabulary is distin- 
guished for its euphony. The poet's ear, nice 
in its demands, is not satisfied with half ex- 
pression ; there must be a union of sound 
and sense. Emerson's speech was often de- 
layed from want of a right word which, when 
it was caj)tured, was hailed with a note of 
emphasis out of all proportion to its place, 
this habit disclosing a poet's intuitions ; and 
his ideas were sometimes shot out as in a 
rapture at discovery of a means of expression, 
and in both his prose and his poetry there are 
irregularities, breathing places, so to speak, 
that ruffle the sheer gloss of the current of 
thought, a trait that cannot be called a defect, 
since nothing is lost thereby ; on the con- 
trary, after these breathing places there is 
emphasis of fervid expression speeding one 
to unexpected heights. 

Emerson's earnestness occasionally suggest- 
ed a dictatorial temper which his demeanor 
denied, and this is the converse of Tennyson's 
speech and manner (if not among his com- 
peers). Neighborliness marked the daily life 
of the one, and reserve that of the other, and 
it is in these and other differences more and 



LITERATURE, LINGUISTS, AND POETS M9 

more tlie two poets are perceived to be of a 
different species. Put to the extreme test, that 
of transportation, the one into the other's 
country, their misplacement would be appar- 
ent. 



XII 

DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 

The impulse to express emotion in rhyth- 
mic and melodic forms is a common heritage 
of man, and song is either an expression of 
joy or grief, among the earliest examples of 
versification variations between these extremes 
of emotion often determining the length of 
the song, a sustained effort and a bridge of 
transition uninvented until an advance in 
means of expression made this possible. 

It is recorded that the Egyptian lyre had 
but three strings ; the Greek improved upon 
this by adding another string, the time which 
elapsed between this improvement and the 
prior invention of the Egyptian instrument 
not as yet determined ; then a thousand years 
or more elapsed before the tetrachord, the 
four-stringed instrument of the Greeks, sug- 
gested the double octave ; but slow as the 
progress, these successive evolutions in form 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 351 

of musical instruments typify the develop- 
ment of the forms of verse. It is only in an 
advanced civilization when metre and mea- 
sure are remarkable for variations, and, meet- 
ing the demand of varied emotions result of 
change of state or change of scene, mastery 
over these variations is sign of genius apart 
from the originality of ideas expressed, as 
the mastery over an instrument is evidence 
of talent if the instrumentalist is incapable 
of musical composition. It is this genius 
for varied versification that differentiated the 
minnelieders from the troubadours, the latter 
using one foot (the Iambus), and the former 
an increasing number, diversified according 
to emotions expressed, the final result being 
the perfected mode of expression assumed 
severally by the poets of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, among whom appeared the great trio, 
Uhland, Heine, and Goethe ; an elaboration 
of form (which occurred in many lands) that 
must have destroyed the freshness of poetical 
thought had not inspiration equaled it, — or 
rather demanded it, — for in verse as in all 
other structures, animate or inanimate, form 
responds to an idea. 

Reahzation of the ideal arrives only 



352 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

through demand of the ideal, whence in fact 
is the phenomena of nature, all laboring to 
the end of a more complete formulation of the 
divine ideal ; and as nature elaborated her 
methods so has the poet, both nature and poet 
handling their imagery with increasing skill. 

Moreover, broadening mentality in human 
nature could not do otherwise than increase 
its skill in expression, man being the child of 
nature and obedient to its trend. It is the 
lyric element in verse heard in the crude song 
of the Indian mother winning her papoose to 
slumber that, elaborated into metre, carries 
with it the hearts of the people. In the lyric 
is imbedded the sigh and cry of the human 
spirit ; here is the saamana of the Hindu, 
the profound and moving expressions of the 
heart so formulated into musical measure and 
seeming naturalness that it is like the spon- 
taneous cantata of the lark. 

And of all the forms conjured up by the 
lyric muse none excels that of the sonnet, 
the growth of which may be traced from the 
couplet, the so-called stornella, which was 
sung accompanied by the lute, this instru- 
ment as suited to the simple lines as was 
David's harp to heroic verse. 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 353 

The complete elaboration of the couplet 
into sonnet form was accomplished by Pe- 
trarch, who sang his compositions accompa- 
nied by this instrument, his voice admirably 
adapted to the purpose, it being sweet and 
flexible. But it should be noted that if the 
Petrarch sonnet is an elaboration of the 
couplet, in its structure is traceable that five- 
toned scale which is universal to earlier music 
and in which is sug-g-ested a subtile law of 
a tonal force fundamental to all expression. 
And it may be claimed that though appar- 
ently artificial it is a raiment of the spirit 
whereby character is indubitably shown. Per- 
sonality is not disguised if the form has 
become generic, the sonnet being therefore 
an outgrowth of man's increasing facility in 
actualizing the ideal, — in embodying that 
phenomena of human consciousness accom- 
panying an evolution of mentality. 

The Petrarch sonnet is a double poem, 
a picture being given, then a commentary, 
an arrangement suggesting the measured 
notes of a bird followed by a cadenza, or a 
song on the shore of a lake, for example, its 
echo heard among the opposite hills, — imagi- 
nation needing little to track the spirit set 



354 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

loose whereby to descant more fully its de- 
light. The arrangement of this form of 
sonnet is peculiarly suggestive of the syste- 
matization of tone a few centuries prior to 
its creation when harmony was introduced 
into musical composition, for it is an amplifi- 
cation, so to speak, of the less elaborate versi- 
fication contained in two lines (the stornella) 
which was but a repetition of the more an- 
cient chants and hymns of praise, these sung 
to instruments, the sonnet's " fourteen fa- 
cets," like notes, capable of all variety of 
expression from grave to gay ; and, inferred 
from the varied character of poetic talent 
that has employed the sonnet, it may be 
presumed to be a form peculiarly desirable to 
the singing souls, these being those who have 
the instinct of birds and the reason of men. 

And if a favorite, the mastery of its intri- 
cacies in the poet's development is a sign of 
a vein of imagination that found restraint of 
form a means of depth and force of expres- 
sion ; hence its use among poets of striking 
individuality, for example, Dante, Michael 
Angelo, and Milton. The sonnet was Words- 
worth's benefactor, raising him from plati- 
tudes that blank verse fostered in his lei- 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 355 

sure-sated muse. On Byron, a magician in 
rhythmical aptitude, the sonnet acted as an 
inspiration to faculties hinted at only in his 
ready versification, his " Ozymandias " be- 
traying a strain of feeling in which Michael 
Angelo wrought his Night. Here, imper- 
sonal, his muse takes the sonnet from the 
languorous sentiment of the followers of Pe- 
trarch into a more intellectual sphere, pro- 
phetic of this English poet's development, 
which unhappily was cut short, — a disaster 
more lamentable than the early death of 
Keats, for the latter poet had acquired a 
shrine in the hearts of those who, Hke him- 
self, acknowledge both the "principle of 
beauty " and " eternal being." 

It is the occasional verse, as in the two 
sonnets, " Prisoner of Chillon " and " Ozy- 
mandias," that the martyr to Greece — and 
also to a passionate rebellion against acci- 
dental deformity in an ill-starred childhood 
and youth — may be measured the nobility of 
Lord Byron's poetic power, for these poems 
show — 

" Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 



356 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; 

A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, 
And glorify our clay 

With light from fountains elder than the Day." * 

The remarkable dignity attained in Byron's 
sonnet, compared with the hghter strain in 
" Childe Harold," which is written in the 
Spenserian stanza and whose latitude per- 
mits all variation of feeling, discloses that 
most admirable quality in the sonnet of re- 
straint both to redundancy and the graceless 
thought. There is always an unwilhngness 
to unbosom one's trivial emotions in a shout 
while this is done frequently enough in con- 
tinuous prattle, and the sonnet, of the nature 
of an exclamation of delight or sorrow, of 
a momentary impression, a single theme, 
an eidullia, puts a barrier to insignificance. 
Over-much versification is the wide doorway 
to paucity of sentiment, and the briefer forms 
of verse are like a tutor commanding silence 
to the end of meditation. 

It is doubtful if anything more complete 
as an expression of moving passion, together 
with a delicacy of thought, than the " Portu- 
guese Sonnets" was ever written. The dainty 

* James Russell Lowell, " Commemoration Ode." 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 357 

grace and sparkling charm of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's spii-ifc is here held as in a chalice of 
crystal. In many of the Spanish sonnets 
there is found a similar strain, that language, 
blending the richness of the German tongue 
with the melody of the Italian, lending itself 
to the sentiments of the heart. Petrarch's 
sonnets are also comparable to Mrs. Brown- 
ing's in choice of simile, Italy's skies nour- 
ishing a tenderness that found its expression 
on Perugino's canvases, a refinement which 
has not departed from the French sonnet. 

Of the German poets it may be said senti- 
ments as full of grace have led to formulation 
in verse as those which appear in the " Portu- 
guese Sonnets." But neither the Spanish, 
Italian, French, or German sonnet surpasses 
Mrs. Browning's inimitable work. In this 
comparison, however, it should be remem- 
bered that the impulse to the latter poet's 
production was secure of remarkable results, 
for in the devotion of Mr. Browning, to 
whom the sonnets are dedicated, there was 
every instigation to the highest perfection. 
These two poets were in truth Uke twin stars 
interdependent even in their separate spheres, 
for the powers of the one accelerated the 



358 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

force of the other ; if they labored apart 
and with closed doors the influence of each 
on the other overcame all boundaries, their 
high purpose one. A re23resentative union, 
it would be pleasant to believe this human 
pair a prophecy of retrieval of Eden's disaster. 
Mrs. Browning's sonnets arising out of 
these perfect conditions are incomparable to 
Shakespeare's sonnets, though in the tempest 
of his surprised delight on first reading them 
Mr. Browning suggests a possible comparison. 
Shakespeare's sonnets have a smouldering 
fire in them, an elaboration and magnificence 
that is the essence of a sensuous virility, 
which, overlading his verse, often scorches 
the mesh wherein he set his passion. The 
sonnet, a silken mesh, fares better where 
lighter zephyrs blow and in the ether of 
o^entler emotion. Even that o-olden-belted 
Bacchus, Swinburne, is often too overladen, 
and like a drunken bee breaks throuofh the 
restraining mesh set by Mrs. Browning's in- 
tuition, the substance of his theme more suited 
to the drama than the sonnet. Genuineness 
is unmistakable in the " Portuguese Sonnets," 
imagination has not been whipped to the 
froth of an uninspired fervor, and together 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 359 

"with adornment of sudden fancy there is a 
kernel of chaste passion befitting this form 
of verse which must be Hke an opal, milk- 
white with a heart of flame. Mrs. Brown- 
ing's imaginative nature was supplemented 
by a musical aptitude not equal but similar to 
that possessed by Shelley, but she handled her 
subjects in the longer poems after the fashion 
of Tennyson, who combined the gravity of 
Wordsworth with the metrical finish of Shel- 
ley. In Tennyson, however, while there is 
reverence, profound analysis, and rhythm, 
there is little spontaneity, a quality neces- 
sary to that form in which Mrs. Browning 
achieved her o;reatness. 

The sonnet demands a high tide of that 
inward sea of emotion whose break upon 
the shore of words is rhythmic but restrained. 
It is restraint disclosed in Mrs. Browning's 
sonnets that sets them apart from women's 
verse ; suggesting more than is expressed, 
they incite the imagination to pass the limits 
of words, a quality that is discoverable in 
German lyrics. The ode demands a similar 
restraint, though its form is more plastic, 
for the personal element in an ode is often 
its special characteristic and this element 
demands always a judicious reticence. 



360 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Keats "was at his maximum of power in 
both forms, the ode and the sonnet, for he 
had the Shakespearean mastery of language 
turning its numerous facets to catch the 
light of fancies replete with suggestion. His 
attitude was never self-assertive like that of 
Byron, who was apparently least satisfied 
with the impersonal and universal, wherefore 
Keats's affinity to Hellenic thought and 
Byron's realism and modernism. That Keats 
was moulded by the influences of natural 
phenomena is everywhere evident in his 
poems. He perceived the verities whence 
natural phenomena arise also, hence, the 
value of his work and its imperishableness, 
— its very incompleteness a charm, like 
Michael Angelo's unfinished marbles, imply- 
ing some condition yet to be fulfilled, the 
hand removed for the moment. Achieve- 
ment in formulation gratifies the senses, but 
an arrest at the brink of expression is as 
suggestive as a finger on the hp. 

If deplorable the limitation of Keats's 
works, more deplorable is it to the poet if 
he overwrites himself, — a defect into which 
many authors fall. The second part of 
Goethe's " Faust " fails in the interest of the 



' DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF ]^XPRESSION 3G1 

first ; Browning is often redundant, as in 
" Paracelsus ; " and it is in these defects 
there is a sign of change in methods of ex- 
pression, prose becoming the vehicle sought 
by the prolific mind, the novel assumed as 
a means of broader expression, both idealism 
and realism finding therein a theatre suited 
to the requirements of that duality which is 
the component of human nature. Sir Walter 
Scott, in his poetry commonplace, through 
the novel wins the admiration of the world. 
Victor Hugo is great principally in the 
production of " Les Miserables." Goethe, 
though a dramatic poet, finds it necessary 
for fuller expression of concepts arising from 
his comprehensive study of the world-spirit to 
write a novel. These writers, lengthy as were 
their productions, won acclamation through- 
out Christendom, and the novel, as a literary 
vehicle for philosophic, humane, and roman- 
tic sentiment, became thereafter a means of 
greater influence towards intellectual growth 
than poetry. Establishing an equilibrium 
between idealism and realism, fostering im- 
agination and educating perception, satisfy- 
ing the intelligence of man without demand- 
ing the exclusion of the one or other factor, 



362 NATURE, AND HUMAN NATURE 

the novel is one of the causes of the declme 
of poetry, verse becoming an adjunct to lit- 
erary expression, a means of expression rele- 
gated to the few whose nature demands that 
which alone can be expressed by way of 
rhythmic measure, tone bestowing what the 
so-called sixth sense is claimed to bestow on 
man. 

Furthermore, if the comprehensiveness of 
the novel is one cause of the decline of poetry, 
there was yet another force in the field of 
expression that, opening means of presenta- 
tion of human feeling equally with rhythm 
and metre, by surpassing poetry in these lines, 
did much towards its eclipse, and this force, 
as has been implied, was music. Musical 
composition gave to German ideality, for ex- 
ample, a means of expression that Germany's 
many forms of literature could not provide, 
even though her language contains deposits 
of applied words, each latent with human 
experience, their tap-root in the sources of 
language itself. 

Music gave utterance to emotions that 
Italian painting failed to express, and hence 
arose the Italian opera. Yet, it will be asked, 
is it not evident in the opera that poetry is 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 3G3 

tlie basis of musical composition in so far as its 
sentiment is concerned, since its themes are 
borrowed from the subjects first selected and 
elaborated by the poet? But, we answer, 
poetry is rhythmic music. It is in music 
that ideality finds its complete expression, 
hence its breadth of foundation in Germany 
where the energies of imagination gave birth 
to multifarious inventions, these requiring an 
ideality which, applied to music, gave birth 
to German compositions. 

And this ideality, shown by mventions 
of practical use, had a mathematical quality 
which is more necessary to music than to 
poetry, for in a limited sense music is a 
science, poetry an art. Hence it may be 
assumed that in the rise of music there was 
the dawn of the scientific age, the influence 
of which is subversive of the reis^n of the 
muse of poetry, notwithstanding its long 
reign, — and whence, moreover, the success 
of a combination of poetry and music, the 
one subordinated to the other as in Wao^ner's 
operas ; for this composer rehearses the tragic 
experiences of the human spirit through 
adaptation of folk-lore to his compositions, 
and thus includes modern consciousness and 



364 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

arclmic genuineness, concerning which two 
factors it may be said that the archaic (folk- 
lore) is single and direct, modern conscious- 
ness complex and indirect, two factors admir- 
ably fitted to the expression of the emotions 
of human nature. 

The ineffectiveness of poetry to win popu- 
lar preference was occasion of other combi- 
nations, such as the modern drama. Dramatic 
poems fulfill the requirements that are per- 
petually enforced, — that is, a gratification 
of both the eye and ear, whence the success 
of the opera. 

Appliances in presenting the dramatic 
poem were of the simplest character in the 
beginning. Prior to the Greek stage and its 
quaint appointment the drama was merely 
a masquerade, its setting such environment 
as nature offered ; when the Hellenic drama 
declined, together with Greece's high estate, 
the drama, surviving in the Mystery Plays of 
Western Europe, provided little else. Even 
in Shakespeare's day, when all forms of liter- 
ature flourished, the tragedy and the comedy 
alike were performed without accessories 
legitimate to their themes. Nevertheless, so 
satisfactory the method of expression, the 



DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF EXPRESSION 365 

drama continued to gain in power, its influ- 
ence but stayed temporarily by rigor of Puri- 
tan maledictions, these leveled often more at 
the levity than at the literature of the stage. 

The English drama in its earlier form 
possessed the defect of redundancy, as did 
English poetry, and the change of attitude 
towards all literary work is shown by the 
prunmg necessary to place Shakespeare's 
plays on the stage. In poetry the epic of 
eleven books like the ^neid finds only occa- 
sional readers, and in the drama it is the stu- 
dent who reads the many-act play. This early 
redundancy, shorn away by modern pruning, 
is avoided by later dramatists. M. Rostand 
completes his work with the firmness of 
Phidias, his idea chiseled directly, and with 
a master's security of both conception and 
expression. The same may be said of Mae- 
terlinck, who deals with the mystical as one 
who is familiar with things beyond the 
boundary of sense, his idealism at the same 
time clothed in a Rembrandt realism. 

The composite nature of the drama and 
the opera is an expression of the evolution 
of intelligence ; it betrays the continued de- 
mand of the human spirit by means of the 



366 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

understanding and perceptions to formulate 
the ideal. Engaging the ear, the form de- 
lights the eye, the one an avenue whence 
attentiveness and consideration are derived, 
and the other a means of security of appre- 
hension ; combined methods whereby arise 
all educative influences wherein outward 
phenomena lend their universality to in- 
ward life, they are an expression of the 
trend of human evolution. 



XIII 

THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 

Closely allied to music in its structural 
completeness, the sonnet is a literary organ- 
ism, so to speak ; satisfying the judgment as 
does the Parthenon, a crystal, or a rose, its 
form has been assumed as a vehicle for the 
more exalted moods of joy, grief, friend- 
ship, love, or philosophic reverie. Emphasis 
always desirable in these moods, it permits 
that da capo assumed in musical composi- 
tion, giving force by the final note in the 
last stanza, as, for instance, when descanting 
on the afflicting conditions of blindness Mil- 
ton at close of his noble verse pens the mem- 
orable line : — 

" They also serve who only stand and wait," — 

rhyme and sentiment a response to that 
which had o^one before. 

Michael Angelo, discovering the sonnet's 
perfection of mould, thus enshrines his varied 
emotions, and as in sentiments attendant on 



368 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

his enigmatical devotion to Vittoria, — the 
one romance of his life, — so also his impas- 
sioned admiration for Dante is summarized 
in a line ^ as trenchant as Milton's verse, 
a comparison that suggests the compensa- 
tion of imagination, as both poets dreamed 
of Paradise, the soul shut in its own Eden. 

That Italy's sculptor, painter, architect, 
and poet, Michael Angelo, on donning his 
singing robes gave preference for the re- 
straining measure of the sonnet, declares its 
availability for an expression of the most 
profound emotions that the human heart is 
capable of. And it is significant that this 
great Italian had due regard for the often 
quoted suggestion of Petrarch that the 
thought should be borne in upon the reader 
at close. 

It is in adherence to this rule that unity is 
acquired between theme and rhythm, the re- 
verberant close providing a melodious echo 
to the ear while emphasizing the thought. 
And here may be mentioned the charming 
conceit that the recurrent rhyme of the 

^ " Ne'er walked the earth a greater man than he," ren- 
dered into English. See Mrs. Ednah Cheney's Sonnets of 
Michael Angelo. 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 369 

sonnet is suggested by the bells of grazing 
herds, and that these echoing bells in the 
far-famed Valley of Provence induced its 
name. But this conceit should not take 
the honor of the inception of the sonnet 
from the two stanzas, the so-called stornella, 
which, traceable to the most ancient form of 
rhythmic expression, provided an impetus to 
a reduplication of stanzas, these finally de- 
veloping into the fourteen Hues characteriz- 
ing a sonnet. Nor should it be forgotten 
that this evolution is due to Fra Guittone, 
" musical brother " of the Roman Church, 
equally a participant in the honor of devel- 
oping lyric forms of verse with Pier della 
Vigne,^ state secretary to Frederic II. ; for 
it is a proof that the sonnet, as also musical 
harmony, had its cradle in the cloister, a fact 
that is an example of the activity of tradi- 
tional habits of song exercised where barren- 
ness of surrounding would seem to induce 
barrenness of mind, the cloister inducing 
meditation as did blindness to the bards of 
Greece and England, — to Homer, Milton, 
and yet later that sad singer, Philip Marston, 
— its serenity making the soul vocal, when 
1 MSS. 1332. 



370 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

the yeoman, whose daily hfe is abounding 
in association with natural beauty, is dumb. 
But it may be rightly contended that the 
climes of Provence and of Sicily are equally 
associated with the development of the son- 
net, environment assuredly giving a trend to 
genius, though not creating it, and this espe- 
cially where " open air " is the common re- 
sort of all the world, while to natural phe- 
nomena are properly traced influences that 
gave rise to the love-sonnet. It is the vil- 
lage green whereon are heard the lute and 
mandolin, the player singing to love in son- 
net or madrigal, the musical tinkle of the 
mandolin, unobtrusive as the purl and flow 
of a rivulet, through delicacy of sound ad- 
mirably suited to the spirit of the song. 
In ancient Provence there was a rivalry 
among troubadours to exalt feminine grace 
and 

" The hourly mercy of a woman's soul," 

the incalculable influence of which is now 
felt in the world, the immediate origin of 
that influence in the adoration of mother- 
hood through the apotheosis of Mary, the 
mother of Christ, which was impetus to the 
chivalry of an unlettered knighthood, whose 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 371 

songs SO often took a lyric form, as in the 
sonnet (its tonal structure satisfying the fas- 
tidious 'preux chevalier) was embodied the 
tender adorations of the lover of a subse- 
quent period. 

Southern climes have been fertile in love 
lyrics, for they celebrate emotions common 
to elemental nature which here rise to the 
surface, all the world " outdoors " and under 
the sky. In the southern clime is more ob- 
servable that enjoyment of agreeable tone 
that is universal to lower animate life, and 
which is an heritaofe of human nature. 
Here are discovered vestio;es of a mental 
condition suggestive of the cradle of Eden 
where man lived in familiar association with 
those more orderly children of God, our 
elder brothers, the birds and beasts of field 
and forest. In these summer chmes man 
sings hymns to the God immanent in nature 
as spontaneously as the rivers chant their 
way to the sea, wherefore the place of the 
lyric's birth, and the final evolution of that 
crowned queen of lyrics, the sonnet. 

It is in the sweet south where love carols ; 
and there is a sug-a-estion of the aria of a 
long-tarrying summer in Mrs. Browning's 



372 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

sonnets, the language English, the spirit 
Italian. 

The very English Milton betrays an Italian 
influence in his verse, while our Longfellow, 
English in sentiment, is most inspired in his 
memorable three sonnets preliminary to a 
translation of the " Divina Commedia." And 
thus on the austere and self-contained, or the 
gentle and refined, the far effect of a south- 
ern clime is notable, the pervasive power of 
natural phenomena shown as the incense of 
a bank of violets far-blown by the " sweet 
south." The student of Persian verse, for 
example, is soon penetrated by a breath 
from a sun-warmed soil, lyric-lilacs calling 
the spirit away from " chilled regions ribbed 
with ice," the sigh of the soul ever being 
for summer and fair skies. 

Yet, if the English sonnet is suggestive 
of southern climes, it is evident that other 
influences have wrought out a diversity of 
sentiment owing to which the poet Keats 
perceived that a divergence from the ar- 
ransfement of the Petrarchan sonnet was 
desirable, this deviation such as had been 
made by Shakespeare. 

Keats' s muse was not influenced by Italian 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 373 

methods of expression except indirectly. 
The spirit of Greek art moved him most, 
as indicated by his sonnet on " Chapman's 
Homer ; " and in this when set beside a 
Petrarchan sonnet there is a sus"srestion of 
the difference between similar hio^h notes 
struck upon a violin and a violoncello — a 
difference, to change the figure, like that 
which surprises the eye when suddenly 
turned from a Greek chef d'ceuvre to an 
Italian. So also to read " Ozymandias " by 
Byron and at the same time Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti's " True Woman " is suddenly to be 
aware of the remarkable distinction that may 
be found in similar forms of verse, the tonal 
structure not limiting but providing for a di- 
versity of emotion, as is the case with the 
sonnet : — 

TRUE WOMAN. 

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring ; 

A bodily beauty more acceptable 

Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell ; 
To be an essence more environing 
Than wine's drained juice ; a music ravishing 

More than the passionate pulse of Philomel, — 

To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell, 
That is the flower of life, how strange a thing ! 

How strange a thing to be what man can know 
But as a sacred secret ! Heaven's own screen 



374 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow ; 

Closely withheld, as all things most unseen, — 
The wave-bowered pearl, the heart-shaped seal of green 
That flecks the snowdrop underneath the suow. 



OZYMANDIAS. 

I met a traveler from an antique land 

Who said : " Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand. 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, 
Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things) 

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fled ; 

And on the pedestal these words appear : — 
' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 

Look on my works, ye mighty ! and despair ! ' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away ! " 

The hot pulses of the southerner are felt 
in the rhythm of Rossetti's sonnets, and this 
even while the poet is an exile, for Italy's 
impassioned son is astray where English 
hedgerows determine nature's boundaries 
instead of the Alps and blue-mantled bay 
— a mischance of environment, however, to 
the Italian poet as ineffective in suppressing 
his natural heritage as those deplorable con- 
ditions encompassing Lord Byron's early 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 375 

manhood, who, nevertheless, was apt to 
brood on their marks even when giving evi- 
dence of the characteristics of a sturdy son 
of a northern clime capacitated to efface 
them, this brooding on extraneous influ- 
ences particularly betrayed in the statement, 
introductory to " Childe Harold," that this 
poem — 

" Showed that early perversion of mind and morals 
leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment 
in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature and 
the stimulus of travel on a soul so constructed and mis- 
directed were ineffective," — 

a statement which is better borne out by 
triviality of thought than by " Childe Har- 
old's " sustained measure. 

Byron's metrical leash was never slack ; an 
accelerant movement ran through his verse 
declaring a vigorous mind, as also an Anglo- 
Saxon nativity, even if the subject were de- 
rived from experiences in the south. He 
could not, if he would, set the chime of 
rhyme to the tinkle of bells on woolly flocks 
in the valley of primrose daUiance, his metre 
ever suggestmg the quickstep of passionate 
unrest or a continued impetus toward some 
high goal. Consequently where the ficti- 



376 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

tious sentiment demands languor of senti- 
ment the cumulative measure overrides the 
thought at a gallop, and instead of a sated 
muse a victory is the poet's escutcheon ! 
Lord Byron's pretenses, his masquerade in 
the o^arb of the extreme vices of his asre, 
continually dropped away from an underly- 
ing earnestness (which is an inheritance of 
genius), and unknown to himself there is an 
evidence of a poet's great mission in some 
sudden turn of thought, a nobler strain 
issuing from his pen, the depth of whose 
current was declared at last, his life dedi- 
cated to a purpose as unexpected as it was 
magnanimous ; but here the threads of life 
were cut, as often happens, the momentous 
moral change being the signal for immediate 
transplantation. 

Introspection, together with egoism, mar 
the beauty of "Childe Harold," and these 
defects are not uncommon in women's poetry, 
a personal and morbid sentiment disclosing 
limitation of sympathy for aught beyond the 
pale of a narrow individual experience. It 
is necessary while voicing emotion to shun 
personal idiosyncrasies, so to avoid the ex- 
pression of trivial impressions while actual- 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 377 

izing those elemental j)assions constituting' 
the basis of human nature, and whose kalei- 
doscopic changes are as varied as the sea- 
sons, nymphs of the sun. 

Mrs. Browning's success lies in an expres- 
sion of sentiments universal to the experi- 
ences of the heart, and all those poems which 
have a general grasp of the tendencies of 
human nature while participating in the 
drama of love are of enduring quality, their 
influence unevanescent and permanent. The 
lyric quality of women's verse, especially no- 
ticeable in the great Englishwoman's son- 
nets, gives it place particularly in the expres- 
sion of tender sentiment ; a sentiment that 
includes, as in Christina Rossetti's verse, 
self-renunciation, an attribute distinguishing 
human nature at that period which is ger- 
minal to absorption of self in love of another, 
and which nevertheless is an era of a mag- 
netic personal attraction, a period very pre- 
cisely illustrated in the germination of a 
rose, this being a time when the plant be- 
stows itself in the midst of a sphere of fra- 
grance upon the seed. It is the necessity of 
life that it should give itself — so is it that 
life is more abundant, and true of life, true 
of love. 



378 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Christina Rossetti did not fail to perceive 
this law, as the following sonnet shows : — 

" Amor, che ne la mento mi ragiona.''^ — Dante. 
" Amor vien nel bel viso di cosiei." — Petbabch. 

If there be any one can take my placs 

And make you happy whom I grieve to grieve, 
Think not that I can grudge it, but believe 

I do commend you to that nobler grace, 

That readier wit than mine, that sweeter face ; 
Yea, since your riches make me rich, conceive 
I, too, am crowned while bridal crowns I weave, 

And thread the bridal dance with jocund pace. 

For if I did not love you, it might be 

That I should grudge you some one dear delight. 
But since the heart is yours that was mine own, 
Your pleasure is my pleasure, right my right, 
Your honorable freedom makes me free. 
And, you companioned, I am not alone. 

The special attribute of this poem is the 
delicate insistence of love in holding its 
allegiance whatever the accident of circum- 
stance, that allegiance inevitably resting upon 
a basis established in the primaries of human 
nature. 

There are notable examples in America of 
the lyric quality shown in Miss Rossetti's 
sonnets, and among these are Mrs. Moul- 
ton's sonnets, the sentiment being sugges- 
tive of a tenderness that is characteristic of 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 379 

those earlier wi-iters who adopted this form 
of verse with eminent success, as Camoens, 
so also many French lyrists, for her themes 
are laden with gentle meditation, nor too 
grave nor too gay, rudeness of tone un- 
risked. 

Edith Thomas's lyre, now stilled, gave pro- 
mise of rare tone, her verse suggesting by 
its classic clearness of expression the influ- 
ence of Greek thought, a soil well chosen 
for early cuttings if native loam be given, 
this supplied increasingly as adolescence is 
reached. 

It is of interest to note the strengthening 
chord of the Shakespearean lyre in the use 
of the sonnet. Shakespeare's muse indeed 
has been the inspiration of many lyrics east 
and west, north and south. 

This sonnet, for example, perhaps the most 
remarkable for its chaste though intense pas- 
sion, has traits of expression that lead to the 
analysis of every sonnet on love penned 
since the dramatist's time, the result being 
to find a likeness that is discoverable in di- 
verse roses, the distinction being that certain 
species are laden with fragrance to the last 
petal of the corolla and others evanescent 



380 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

and restricted to the centre, that being, in 
the sonnet, its procreant idea : — 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends vpitli the remover to remove: 
Oh no ; it is an ever fixed mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even unto the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

It is a memorable peculiarity of Shake- 
spearean dramas that the scenes and subjects 
of many of the more engaging are derived 
from Italy ; and as in the drama so in the 
sonnet is found the unstinted warmth of 
southern feeling. Breaking away from Pe- 
trarchan structure, building more freely as 
his prodigal fancy demanded, Shakespeare 
is still Italianesque in his sympathies, and 
his influence on the English sonnet savors 
little of the Anglo-Saxon genius. It is in a 
land of summer skies the birds nest and 
sing, and summer skies bid the poets carol, 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 381 

since those ancient days when the Aryan 
race was cradled in the verdant valleys of 
the East, and it is notable that flocks of 
singers of northern clime, like the great 
dramatist, in their sweeter strain harp as if 
born in the south, so great is the yearning 
for a natural environment, a life in the open, 
free of the bondage of sheltering walls. The 
lays of Chaucer are brimming over with 
summer like a spring river ; and such the 
strains of all that English aftermath of 
nature lovers among whom in unobtrusive 
garb is Jean Ingelow, whose spontaneous 
outbursts suggests a mountain ousel soaring 
as it sings. 

New England may claim a singer of sim- 
ilar sympathies in Emily Shaw Forman, if of 
less range of expression. Mistress of son- 
net structure, it is in her " Sonnets of the 
Wild Flowers " that is perceived an impas- 
sioned love of nature, a ruddy warmth of 
adoration that while descriptive of a realm 
where the flowery children of the sun have 
learned to be wary of prodigality of bloom, 
yet shows a largeness of emotion, gift of a 
far-off heritage, evoked by tropic abundance. 
Strictly true to the special graces of each 



382 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

flower of her circlet of opals, Mrs. Forman 
gives the tender grace of sentiment which 
Petrarch gave to his sonnets to Laura. Each 
flower, indeed, is a njmph disporting itself 
in sun and air, bright or bleak, with a per- 
sonal charm, and the author, thus declaring 
her powers of interpretation, also wins way 
toward the bard's fane. 

Interpretation of nature is the function of 
the true poet, — its phenomena of form the 
expression of effluent life, — and it is this 
interpretation that has given Emerson his 
authority in respect to the processes whereby 
the estrangement between men self-exiled 
from Eden may be resisted, his ethics being 
based on the common destiny as the common 
origin of humanity ; his principles those on 
which is based the ark of covenant of the 
United States. 

And through recognition of these princi- 
ples Emma Lazarus — a daughter of that 
race whence came the inspiration of our 
forefathers at founding of this Republic — 
assumed the place of a bard prophetic of a 
new era : — 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 383 

THE NEW COLOSSUS. 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame 
With conquering limbs astride from land to land. 
Here at our sea-washed sunset gate shall stand 
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 
Is the imprisoned lightning and her name 
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand 
Glows world-wide welcome ; her mild eyes command 
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 
" Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp," cries she 
With silent lips. " Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, 
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me — 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door." 

This sonnet is reverberant of the lyre struck 
by David's hand many centuries before it 
befell that the Hebraic people were exiles in 
every country alike, until crossing the seas 
they came to the New World. It has the 
force of sentiment only possible to genuine 
inspiration. 

The poet's ear may be trusted to catch the 
key of popular feeling. He who wrote the 
Marseillaise had heard its leadino- note in 
town and country ; and were there not a de- 
mand for a solution of the vexed problem 
how to lift toil to the level of nature's joyous 
labor, the Angelus never would have wrought 



384 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

out in the verse of Edwin Markliam its pro- 
test, which, bringing the world vociferant 
about the poet's ears, turned attention to the 
fact that poetic voices were at matins on 
the Pacific slope, an event prophesied in the 
verse of Joaquin Miller and emphasized in 
the poem, " The Man with the Hoe," a poem 
conspicuous by striking the keynote of a 
people's unrest. 

In the " Recessional " is heard a chord 
struck in Cromwell's time, and of a higher 
note, since it arouses a spirit questioning the 
influences set abroad through dominance of a 
militant force, — a force that too readily may 
degenerate, and the descendants of the Puri- 
tans become a fateful octopus to less mature 
races. 

It is in these two poems — " The Man 
with the Hoe " and the " Recessional " — are 
uttered the vital interests of the opening 
century, the titles of the poems as descrip- 
tive as the verse, retrogression being threat- 
ened and toil the topic of the day. 

The poet's soul is a magnet of truths fly- 
ing hke cherubs from an invisible throne ; 
it is he who inspires the world-spirit, and 
while betraying wrong declares that there is 



THE SONNET AND PROPHECY 385 

hope for human nature in human nature ; — 
if in this fair new world gain is seen dan- 
cing Hke a satyr on his hoofs, greed playing 
the hornpipe, the poet singing down the 
heights demands recognition of a strong 
new Spirit abroad, who lifts her lamp beside 
the golden door. 

The existence of truth is proved by con- 
demnation of the false, and while immersed 
in base ambitions governments scheme, lay 
the knife to the throat of young liberty, 
crush under the heel the weak, there echoes 
along the corridors of time a Marseillaise, a 
Recessional, a Toiler's Reproach, and ere the 
reverberations cease there arises a Nemesis 
which slays the slayer : for evil is temporary, 
good eternal. 



r 



XIV 

INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 

The effect of natural environment is ap- 
parent in the trend of the poet's thought as 
in the painter's theme, but that effect is 
equally apparent in the force of expression 
in the patriot's plea. 

It is he who has Hved close to nature who 
moulds national prejudices to broader issues 
securing a firmer basis for the establishment 
of popular government. Do we not perceive 
in the far trend of Abraham Lincoln's views 
a hint of our wide American plains limited 
but where the sky meets the horizon ? In 
the eloquence of Daniel Webster is there not 
the breadth and tumultuous flow of the sea, 
scintillating imagery and profound truth leap- 
ing to light as he elaborates his argument ? 
How compact are his sentences, and well- 
knit like the muscle of the wide-horned ox ! 
Picturing" the massive brow and meditative 
face of the statesman as he sat by his win- 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 387 

dow at Marslifield and with failinof vision 
looked into the patient eyes of his much 
prized servants of the yoke, does not there 
also rise a vision of broad sympathies and an 
enduring power in the man ? Washington, 
of that stock which may well trace its origin 
among the Norse Vikings, possessed the in- 
stinct of command and power of self-control 
habitual to one associated with elemental 
forces, to wait on which is to command 
them. It is easy to imagine the first Presi- 
dent of the United States, a Vildng at the 
helm of a ship in the midst of tempests such 
as assail the North Sea, calm, vigilant, and 
self-contained. On the other hand it is easy 
to imagine Napoleon Bonaparte a leader of 
those Huns and Poles described in Sienkie- 
wicz's vivid tale of " Fire and Sword," in- 
effaceable traits marking him a descendant 
of the Huns and a warrior by heredity. The 
dramatist M. Rostand has emphasized this 
law of heredity in " L'Aiglon," representing 
the Kino^ of Rome under the constrainino- 
influence of his lineage, German and Corsi- 
can, so forcibly that the law has the aspect 
of a Nemesis such as is weirdly apparent 
in the Chorus of Sophocles rehearsing the 



388 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

calamitous woes of the House of Labdacus, 
the fateful event in " L'Aiglon " hastened 
by the struggle between opposite hereditary 
traits of character. 

Bonaparte is not only an example of the 
continuity of ferocious instincts in higher 
animal life, but of their cumulative force 
when unchecked by those divine attributes 
which hold in check even the beast of the 
forest, though it be a fox, a type of animal 
that the Christ assumed as representative of 
a cruelty implacable when in pursuit of self- 
interest. Elemental human nature is not 
more readily tamed than is the zebra ; it 
often retains the characteristics of the eagle 
even when successive evolutions have obliter- 
ated the outward semblance. 

Intellectual development has little power 
to subordinate these characteristics, for in- 
telligence is not the tap-root of being, but 
the affections, these resulting in sympathies 
on which the existence of the human family 
depends ; intelhgence, indeed, may become a 
destructive force as in the case of Bona- 
parte. 

Differing: from Washino^ton in the fact 
that self-aggrandizement was his leading 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 339 

purpose, the Corsican warrior of necessity 
differed from him iu methods of action, these 
being Hke those of the eagle, who robs the 
fish hawk without compunction. Washing- 
ton's purpose was that of the patriot, his 
methods humane, and therefore a common- 
wealth of the common people was the crown- 
ing achievement of his noble life. 

The difference in the two, Washington 
and Bonaparte, dwelt in the elemental con- 
stitution of their two natures. Each en- 
dowed with great force of character, the dis- 
tinction appears in the steady equilibrium 
of brain and heart in the former and the 
atrophy of the heart in the latter ; the one 
humane, the other inhumane ; high and 
noble sympathy on the part of Washington, 
a treacherous appearance of sympathy on the 
part of Bonaparte. 

Representative personalities in the drama 
of the evolution of humanity, their end be- 
trays the fact that highly developed mental- 
ity is powerless against the divine principle 
of love, — that brain-power is but an ineffi- 
cient agent ^vithout heart-power. 

And these dual pov/ers are necessary 
for supreme efficiency in literature. Dante's 



390 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

" Divina Commedia " is marred by a venge- 
ful piety, his pen sometimes wielded with 
the spirit of Attila. Such was the spirit of 
Michael Angelo goaded by the criticism of 
" cribbed and cabined brains " whose mean 
judgments were continued obstacles to the 
development of his lofty concepts, and both 
poet and painter appear to a later generation 
equally implacable in temper, a blot on their 
noble escutcheon. 

The battles of pen and brush are not be- 
trayed by scenes of carnage, but the spirit 
of war exists in the page and picture if once 
in the heart of poet and painter. And it is 
evident that human nature retains the in- 
stincts of the fox or the eagle, or wherefore 
the sudden grapple of nations at chance of 
prey, if the memorable Treaty in the House 
of the Wood was not a tiger's embrace? 

Unrest accompanies the state which is 
without balance of heart and brain, for the 
equihbrium of will and understanding is a 
necessary condition for an ef&cient life — if 
literary or manual, if that of the statesman, 
of the priest, of the author, the tradesman, 
the mechanic, the farmer, or the sailor. 

The old myth of Justice, with her scales 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 391 

set ill the heavens, is founded on fact. The 
Egyptian pictured in these scales the hiunan 
heart on one hand, the symbol of truth on 
the other, immortal well-being so declared 
dependent on an equipoise, — an illustration 
that may be brought down into the details 
of life, and which the history of the individ- 
ual, as the race, the aggregate individual, 
enforces. 

The phenomena of the skies have ever 
been of abiding influence upon myth-makers, 
but it was left to the Egyptian sages to con- 
struct a scheme of detailed comparison that 
presented the immanence of that power in 
human nature which kept in poise the planet- 
ary worlds. And an illustration of the consti- 
tution of the soul, its integrity of individual 
being, as its perpetuity, this comparison pro- 
vides a singularly coherent argument; the pei^ 
ceptions equipped to map out the necessary 
details, knowledge of the constitution of mind 
and matter aid in the analysis. But it is not 
my purpose here to more than draw a simile, 
— to note that in the dual constituents of 
human character, those characterized as brain 
and heart, there is that which is as depend- 
ent upon equal action as are the stars upon 



392 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

centripetal and centrifugal forces, disintegra- 
tion of personal force as Kkely to follow dis- 
obedience to the law of love as irresponsive- 
ness of solar substances to magnetism. 

The purely intellectual man, appealing to 
reason, finds his influence narrowed from 
want of response ; but let that intellectuality 
be accompanied by a warm heart, his power 
is not circumscribed. If he be an orator 
there is acclamation. " A man," the audi- 
ence exclaims, " of wonderful magnetism ! " 
— a term universally applied to him who has 
a warm heart in obedience to the more 
universal fact that sympathy comes from the 
heart, — that sympathy is love, a love potent 
to win the multitude, whose ear is keen to 
catch the higher note, and so ready to con- 
demn the false. 

As with the orator so with the poet. 
Browning's heart pulsates in the rhythm of 
his lyrics, his being the balance of heart and 
brain, a balance that made Shakespeare the 
chief of dramatists — and lacking it Tenny- 
son missed of becommg one, the di*ama im- 
possible to his muse. 

There is that in plain human nature, if on 
its own part incapable of inspired speech, 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 393 

which perceives itself wronged when imper- 
fectly rej)resented, and a poet who fails in 
knowledge of the springs whence the actions 
of real life is most summarily discarded — 
lofty as is his polished verse. 

The greatness of the Greek drama is in 
the large way with which elemental human 
nature is conceived, and this even at the 
epoch when mentality was, in fact, but in the 
adolescent stage, being ungrounded in the 
exact sciences — adolescent and therefore 
searching for novelty, soaring to the zenith 
in dreams of beauty, plunging into the nadir 
in disappointment, a rare, unripe fruit of 
ages of development. This species of men- 
tality could find no rest, its growing period 
demanding change and a curious indeter- 
mination of views. Having advanced in 
philosophical breadth, there came a moment 
when the rehgious genius of the people re- 
stored Dionysus, hero of a truth-laden na- 
ture myth, to his wonted temple. For in 
him was found a crystallization of humanity's 
early trust, that trust prompted by the all 
powerful alchemy of the sun to convert the 
white blood of the vine into ruby nectar, a 
mystical rite in solar transmutations reen- 



394 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

acted at that mystic marriage when " the 
conscious water saw its God and blushed " 
— as told in the legends of Christ. 

The Greek genius built up a delicate 
structure of mystical promise much like frost 
the glittering of which on the window-pane 
reports sunrise. There were " impressions " 
(to use Pindar's phrase) in the air preparing 
the Greek world for the statement of So- 
crates, that " no evil can ha23pen to a good 
inan, whether he he alive or dead^'' a fun- 
damental truth, since to be good is to be at 
no antagonism with the basis of being. 

It is noteworthy that the so-ftalled renais- 
sance in Greece, following which appeared 
the dramas of ^schylus, Sophocles, and 
Euripides, reawakened interest in a nature 
myth, the story of Dionysus attracting the 
children of men even when in their adoles- 
cence. Whatever progress had been made, 
there was yet a necessity to enlarge the hope 
and to return again to that trust which is 
inherent in human nature and which was 
bred there by the orderliness of nature. In 
adolescence the froward youth hastens over 
the threshold of home, but after many wan- 
derings he returns if happily he may find 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 395 

the mother within. It is all recorded in the 
annals of the world, — the many wanderings, 
the Circean perils, the Argonautic search for 
the Golden Fleece, the knights seeking the 
Holy Grail. But each wanderer returns to 
cross the threshold, desirous to hear, Welcome, 
my son ! Nature is the mother of men ; it 
is in her scriptures he reads his certainty of 
life — if his " food is truth," if his conduct 
after the orderly movements of " the stars," 
his nature poised on truth and love, his soul 
is in no part defective, neither heart nor 
brain atrophied. 

It is the poet whose nearness to nature 
has given him inspiration, who has empha- 
sized these conclusions of possible blessed- 
ness. The parables spoken by Christ drawn 
from nature, the imagery of the Augustan 
poets, the delicate symbolism in Roman epic, 
in Italian, Spanish, German, and French 
poetry, these appeal to human nature and 
give perpetuity to the poet's fame. How 
lingers the spirit of the new century in 
hearing of Chaucerian carols ! How the 
youthful student gathers inspiration in 
" Midsummer-Night's Dream," the dramatist 
following the steps of the lyrist, as indeed 



396 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

following Virgil came Dante, singing of 
" the bird within its leafy home/' — of the 
doves, even while lifting the mystic curtain 
on Paolo and Francesca in endless continu- 
ance of painful joy, — these birds, inmates 
of the intricacies of woodland and forest, 
appearing upon the stern Florentine's page as 
spontaneously as in their native habitat, he 
being a lover of nature. 

The stately psalmist touches the kindled 
aspiration of the human spirit by a familiar 
picture of the beasts of the field, the trees, 
cedars of Lebanon, and the wild goats. 
And with like stateliness Milton chants his 
measured line, his reverie in the shadow of 
blindness illuminated by remembered scenes 
impressed upon the sensitive memory of 
youth. 

It may be assumed that the perpetuity of 
letters dwells largely in this association of 
human nature with nature (that return to 
Dionysus, the impersonation of all renaissant 
life), — an association that is inevitable to 
the poet. 

Nature is the soul's own environment; 
there is no place for the human spirit out- 
side, nature like human nature being the 
embodiment of God. 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 397 

It is necessary to return to this home, for 
here is tranquillity. Here Wordsworth found 
his serenity and Emerson his theme, this, 
however, resonant, as has been said, with new 
world ethics. Regarding human nature as 
an unlicked cub, it was surely advisable to 
supplement dame Nature's office on occasion 
to teach him the proprieties and " the excel- 
lence of manners ! " 

The necessity to the poet's eye and ear 
for sight and sound in wood and field, his 
desire for the vocal summer or the muffled 
winter, is betrayed in Whittier's return to 
the countryside, where he invokes the 
Spring, — 

" Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod ! " 

Wherefore did Bryant stir the heart of the 
" good gray poet " ? not by reason of his 
deeply human " Thanatopsis," but his " For- 
est Hymn " ! 

The ministers to the world-soul are cradled 
in the unwalled theatre of wild woodlands 
and fields, these ministers not isolated at all 
times from their kind, but not handicapped 
by their too continued presence. 

The poetic insight gives a universality to 
nature lyrics, — these assuming the kinship 



398 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

of human nature, — and as all men are swept 
into the vortex of those emotions that are 
kindled by sorrow or inspired by joy, it is as 
if the host were elevated when a Thanatopsis, 
a Threnody, or a Hymn to Immortality is 
heard. This common sympathy, if not as 
thrilling, is felt when Bryant touches his 
lyre in praise of the fringed gentian, and 
Emerson chants of the marvel of bloom on 
the leafless rhodora, — that sympathy recog- 
nizant of the Absolute, the principle of life, 
which is in the white blood of the vine, 
the azure of the gentian, the flame of the 
rhodora. Wordsworth's genius also gave 
birth to twin flowers, his " Hymn to Immor- 
tality " and song at meeting a " jocund com- 
pany " of daffodils disclosing the universality 
of genius when abroad and in ready touch 
with life, animate or inanimate. Whitman's 
preference, however, is significant, and it 
must be acknowledged that personal passion 
limits sympathy, and it is the occasional mo- 
ment only when the poet escapes himself 
and is lost in a common sentiment. This 
is notable in Wordsworth's poems : for he 
harps on the universal and reveals the 
shallows possible to even a poet, his attitude 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 399 

toward nature often savoring o£ patronage. 
To a less self-conscious poet natural pheno- 
mena has no private application, and exalting 
his mood the fretful edge of personal griev- 
ances disappear, — not through a Prospero- 
like argument leveled at airy nothing, but 
through the poet's grasp of the actual Pre- 
sence in nature. Whitman's faith is sound 
to the core. He hears the heart of God 
beating in the world, His steadying touch 
on the pulse of man whose body as soul is 
electric with divine life. 

Whence came this poet's preference among 
the older American poet's verses ? It is the 
poet of nature whose pipings lead to the hills 
of God, his singing robes woven of moonlit 
flax and garnished with lilies. Was it not 
the poet of nature who in the far-off centu- 
ries sang under Egyptian skies of an aisle in 
the nave of the heavens that led the journey- 
ing soul to the divine hall of truth, whence, 
judgment passed, he entered Eden ? It was 
that poet's liberating thought which divined 
that the concerted action of suns is like 
that of concerted action of souls, mutuality 
a necessity of harmony as of perpetuity. 
Nature, the visible garment of eternal life. 



400 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

inspired the propliet, bard, and poet, whose 
utterances kindle emotions of adoration, so 
consecrating human nature ; for her children, 
the little folk of God, are beauty makers, and 
as they labor, these spinners of bloom on 
lake, field, and upland give eloquent tribute 
to an unseen power whose effluence is first 
love and then beauty, though theirs is a lim- 
ited expression hinting only at what eye has 
not seen in realms of " blossoming causes." 

Limitation is the characteristic of form, 
and need one quarrel thereat ? Striving 
for the absolute, is not definition sacrificed ? 
Moreover, are not the elemental passions of 
human nature a sufficient part of the univer- 
sal to guarantee its homogeneity in the infi- 
nite and absolute? and if being so, what 
more is there to desire ? Not surely to be 
swallowed up in the infinite, a mischance 
that makes a void of the future, the soul of 
man exhaling like a dewdrop in the track- 
less air ! The particular included in the uni- 
versal has a special function, and not suited 
to the impersonal the human soul strength- 
ens itself, demanding at the same time a 
completeness of outfit that will secure pro- 
tection from disintegration or indeed from 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 401 

intimacy of being, the I myself ever on 
guard, each soul Hving and dying sohtary, a 
gem crystallized from the Absolute. 

Moreover, as individualism is a product 
"which is betrayed increasingly by a developed 
mentality, interest in individual life, out- 
growth of mental attitudes, increases, where- 
fore the demand for the presentation of 
marked character in literature, as by the 
modern novel. Poetry deals most happily 
with those moving energies of the human 
spirit which invite idealization, but the novel 
is realistic, analyzing centres of action, pur- 
poses, and events. Bidden by an increasing 
complexity in life, outcome of a more com- 
plex individualism in the human race, the 
novel has established itself as a forcible fac- 
tor in literature. 

The province of both art and literature is 
not diverse, each laboring to show what God 
means when He permits the evolution of a 
soul in human mould. That art has not 
failed to record the changes of that mould, 
structure plastic, bone and muscle like melt- 
ing wax under the imperious force of a 
growing spirit, is evident. To art is due the 
most convincing testimony of those changes, 



402 NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

— changes that are an assurance of the 
increasing influx of divine into human life. 
But while art has conferred her invaluable 
testimony, hterature has represented the 
more evident expansion of the mind, at the 
same time prophesying possibilities of devel- 
opment that are yet dimly apprehended. 

And if the novel discloses purposes and 
character while history points out the onward 
march of nationalities with their burden of 
personal heroism or personal depravity, the 
drama more directly reveals the mighty 
stride of humanity, having its inception in 
primeval tendencies shown in ceremonial 
rites. It is in the history of the drama, 
beginning with the barbaric ceremonial and 
continuing the record to civilization, thus 
including Egypt's resurrection drama, to- 
gether with the mystic rites of Greece and 
the Miracle Plays of Western Europe, that 
the development of human nature is shown 
in such graphic clearness that one feels the 
hand on the wheel which suns and souls 
feel, — the mingling of the divine and hu- 
man, — the " leaven in the loaf," — those 
secret processes which to know is to marvel 
at. The modern drama shows the specializa- 



INFLUENCES AND RESULTS 403 

tion of human genius in the growth of that 
individuaHsm which was slow to stamp its 
record on the human face, — for it seizes on 
events that are typical and representative, 
and in a concrete form discloses the motives 
of human action. And how diverse from 
the early drama, the motive then single and, 
if worshipful, self-seeking and arrogant ! 

A signal example of the changes that have 
been going on during unnumbered ages in 
human nature, this complex character of the 
drama provides a proof of the likeness of 
development between the soul of man and 
vegetal life whose variations at last produced 
that paragon of flowers, the rose, — a com- 
parison implying a power of self-renewal in 
the human soul, like that of a flower. 



Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co. 
Cambridge^ Mass.^ U. S. A. 



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MAR 5 1902'' 

1 COPY DEL, TOCAr.OlV. 
f'lAR, 5 1902 



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